Senate Seeks to Stop Trump’s Tariffs: 04.07.25 (Updated)
Two United States Senators have authored legislation that will permit them to review and possibly put a halt to Trump’s tariffs, which are threatening to set off a recession while they decimate citizens’ savings accounts. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) have coauthored legislation that allows the Senate to review new tariffs. It would allow them to stop any new tariffs within 60 days and to stop any tariffs at any time. However, Trump has vowed that he will veto the legislation if it reaches his desk, according to Jordain Carney at Politico.
RUMOR: Late on Monday, 04.07.25, a rumor circulated that Trump would pause the tariffs for 90 days. That is untrue.
SENATE UPDATE: Senators who have also signed on to support this bill include Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Jerry Moran (R-KS), Thom Tillis (R-NC), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Susan Collins (R-ME), and Tod Young (R-IN). The bill is called the Trade Review Act of 2025.
HOUSE UPDATE: Representative Don Bacon (R-NE) has pledged to introduce a companion bill, making him the first Republican representative who is openly challenging Trump’s destructive tariffs. Bacon plans to introduce his bill, named similarly to the Senate’s Trade Review Act of 2025, which will restore power over tariffs to the Congress. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) states he will not put it up for a vote. Call your legislators! (links below)
What law did the president access in order to set tariffs and control every aspect of them? This is about the emergency statute invoked by Donald Trump when he set tariffs against our trading partners. Once Trump knew what the law was, he figured out exactly how to take best advantage of it.
Actually, it involved three separate acts. The first one was the Trading With the Enemy Act (TWEA), to be enacted during times of war. From it sprang two additional acts, meant to amend TWEA. The first was the National Emergencies Act (NEA), which was passed in 1976, followed by the International Emergency Economics Powers Act (IEEPA) in 1977. Here’s how they worked:
During WWI, Congress passed TWEA at FDR’s request before our country entered the war. It allowed him to continue all trading that we had established with other countries. It also gave the president the ability to decide without going to Congress whether a specific situation was an emergency.
It also gave the president the power to declare a national emergency even if it was not wartime. Besides trading, it could be used to protect US properties seized by foreign powers, to control transactions involving foreign currency, to make decisions about export levels, to stop any hoarding of gold, and to regulate foreign investors in the country.
In the 1970s, Congress assessed the American economy and reviewed the TWEA. They realized that presidents had used the Act by declaring the country was facing an emergency for a period of 40 consecutive years.
The resulting NEA, passed in 1976 in the aftermath of Watergate, ended all then-existing emergencies and also stipulated that it could be used only in a time of actual war. It provided for transparency of any emergency declared or written. Any emergency could be ended with a joint resolution from both houses of Congress.
Congress also passed the IEEPA in 1977, which is very similar to the NEA but intended for use with foreign nations. It is also intended to increase transparency of the president’s actions. It was meant to limit the costs of the designated emergencies. It broadened the scope to include terrorist groups in addition to legitimate governments.
Congress also worried about the scope of IEEPA, and so it passed additional legislation to put some guardrails on limiting the president’s power. First it set a 90-day limit on any declared emergency, and if it then voted by a simple majority that there was no emergency, then actions taken by the president would stop. However, that later changed to include sending it to the president’s desk, and if the president overrode it, then a majority of 60 votes would be required to override it.
It expanded the definition of war so that the IEEPA could be applied to any foreign government, person, or organization attempting to seize American assets, even if that foreign person or entity was on American soil. It also widened the president’s approved manners of disposing of such assets and stated that any liquidation, sale, distribution, and other administration of assets must further American interests.
Both the NEA and the IEEPA were intended to rein in the president’s ability to designate emergencies. However, with the globalization of various economies, their use increased.
Neither of them defines “national emergency.” Neither of them describes what constitutes an “unusual or extraordinary threat.”
CANNOT BLAME HERITAGE: A review of Heritage’s Mandate for Leadership, which contains the blueprint for Project 2025, indicates that the Heritage people recommend against the use of tariffs such as those imposed by Trump.
CALL YOUR LEGISLATORS: It is more important now than ever before to phone your representatives and senators and tell them to vote for this tariff-blocking legislation. Once Trump vetoes it, a two-thirds majority vote will be required to overturn his veto.
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