Terminating the National Emergency Declared to Impose Duties on Articles Imported From Canada

Floor Speech

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Ms. ALSOBROOKS. Mr. President, I stand before you all today to seek unanimous consent for S. 959, the Tariff Transparency Act, my bill that will demand a nonpartisan study on this administration's tariffs and how they will impact everyday Americans.

This administration came in the door saying they would lower costs and ease burdens on American families. These tariffs would do the exact opposite. The President readily admits that these tariffs will disrupt the economy, but he claims two things: that there will only be a minor disruption and says that they will cause a little bit of pain.

Maybe it will only be minor to those who are billionaires, but to everyday Americans, to the people who go to work every day to provide for their families--the families like the family I grew up in, a blue- collar family, a father who is a car salesman and a mother who is a receptionist--well, they can't afford any disruptions, and they cannot afford any further pain.

They deserve instead to know the truth about the Trump tariffs on the front end. They deserve to know exactly how the Trump tariffs will affect their day-to-day lives. They deserve to understand how these moves will change the price of groceries. They deserve to be told if the Trump tariffs will make energy costs more expensive or if their dream of owning a home or a car will be made more impossible. What they don't deserve is to be subjected to this indiscriminate and chaotic approach to this economy that is already not working for everyone.

If these tariffs do depress the economy and a recession comes, which many, many economists are now predicting, it will not be the billionaires who are affected the most. It will be American small businesses that are burdened. It will be American consumers that are harmed. At the end of the day, it will be the American people who are footing the bill for the Trump tariffs.

When we talk about American people, let's be clear. This is the middle class. These are working-class, hard-working people who will be impacted.

Do you know what? This administration knows the truth. They know that these tariffs will raise prices and spike inflation and harm American businesses, but they want to hide it from the American people until it is too late. This is absolutely unacceptable. It is, in fact, wrong.

The American people need someone to stand up for them, so I am here today to stand up for them, to speak for middle-class families across Maryland and across America, working people across the country, to defend the Americans who are fighting to keep a roof over their heads and food on their table and can't afford the chaos that is ensuing in their lives.

I shouldn't be standing for them by myself. They are who we all should be fighting for. They are the ones who sent us here to represent them. They sent us here to make their lives easier. They should be on our minds before any actions that we take in this Chamber.

959 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration; that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

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Ms. ALSOBROOKS. Madam President, in response to that, I say respectfully that I think we have been presented a false choice. In this moment, I think it is really important for us to be able to not only respond to the fentanyl crisis that we have certainly seen in our country--we have seen it in Maryland, and we have seen it all across the country--but I think the urgency of the moment requires to some extent that we are able to walk and chew gum.

We have to fight fentanyl, but we also have to respond to the devastation and respond to the uncertainty and the pain that is created by the tariffs that do directly attack the middle class.

All we are asking in this moment, if these tariffs are so harmless to the American people, well, let's prove it. Allow the bipartisan group, the International Trade Commission, to do the study and to give the American people the benefit of information about how these tariffs will impact their everyday lives, how it will affect the bottom line. Will it, in fact, cause the cost of groceries to rise? Will it, in fact, cause energy costs to increase? Will it, in fact, cause housing to increase?

I think the American people deserve answers, and in this moment where chaos is ensuing all around them, where they are losing their jobs, where they are losing--many of them--the funding streams that help seniors and children to eat, the very least we could do would be to provide information to hard-working families, like the one I grew up in, answers about how these tariffs will, in fact, affect them.

Again, I don't believe that we have to consider the false choice about whether or not we protect our borders against fentanyl and also whether or not we protect the American people.

The President has said this is liberation day. I want to know whom we are liberating. Are we liberating the billionaires who benefit from these tariffs that allow the tax cuts or are we really fighting for middle-class people?

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