Terminating the National Emergency Declared to Impose Duties on Articles Imported From Canada
Floor Speech
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Mr. CRAPO. The sponsors seek the International Trade Commission, or ITC, to conduct a study under section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930. The study would examine the domestic impact of President Trump's tariffs on Canada and Mexico and of potential retaliatory measures.
Section 338 studies are resource-intensive endeavors for the ITC. The chair of Finance is one of the individuals authorized to request such studies and historically has done so sparingly to conserve precious few ITC resources.
I fail to see why we should expend those resources when a number of private groups are already developing economic models on the tariffs at issue.
Furthermore, it bears emphasis that the tariffs are not redressing economic issues but, rather, the Biden administration's failure to secure the border from fentanyl and migration. Yes, tariffs have economic costs, but they can be used as tools too.
The cost of President Biden allowing fentanyl and migrants to flood into the United States is quite high. The proposed bill has no interest in trying to quantify the impact of the Biden administration's failure. Instead, it selectively targets only the new Trump administration for trying to redress a serious public health and national security threat.
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Mr. CRAPO. Madam President, to respond briefly, this entire day is being spent almost entirely on attacking President Trump's tariffs. This is another attack on them.
The bottom line is that the economic data that is being discussed is being created, and the bottom line is that part of this day is to help continue the effort to stop the flow of fentanyl into the United States and stop the flow of illegal migration into the United States that should have been stopped by the previous administration.
I continue my objection.
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Mr. CRAPO. But, ironically, this one adds in an attack on the tax bill that President Trump and we on the Republican side are fighting to enact.
And, once again, we see the politics of fear playing out, saying to Americans that you are going to have all kinds of dire things happen to you so that we can cut taxes for the wealthy. This is a standard attack that has been used for over a decade, and it is no truer today than it has been.
The reality is--and I think most Americans are starting to understand this--that the very tax bill that we put into place 10 years ago, which gave us the strongest economy we have had in years; reduced the deficit dramatically; helped us to create more jobs than we have historically seen, particularly for lower income individuals; and made a capital formation explosion in the United States, stopping all of those large companies from moving their assets out of the United States and moving their jobs out of the United States and made America once again the place where capital is, where America is the place where people come from the world to form capital.
If we do not extend that tax law, there will be a $4.3 trillion tax hike. I am going to say that again: a $4.3 trillion tax increase on all Americans. The average American household will see over $2,500 go up in their tax bill. Madam President, $2.6 trillion of that tax will go to people making less than $400,000 per year, and another 600,000 will go to small businesses--tax hikes hitting small businesses.
What we are fighting to do is to reduce taxes, to keep them stable, rather than letting them go up. That is what this battle is about.
So this unanimous consent request says we can't use revenue from tariffs to offset the costs of saving and protecting those tax increases.
The issue is whether there will be any tariffs in the reconciliation bill, and that is not settled. We don't even know whether that will be done.
But the rules of math have been settled. When someone pays an import tariff, they have paid an amount that is deposited in the U.S. Treasury and adds to the total of our Treasury funds; that is mathematical truth. That basic arithmetic is settled and is consistent with how we calculate and estimate America's revenue.
Indeed, the Congressional Budget Office's June 2024 report notes that revenue from existing tariffs from 2024 to 2034 could total $872 billion. We can debate whether tariff rates should be higher or lower to bring that total number up or down, but we cannot change the fact that money entering the Treasury, pursuant to law, should be counted as money entering the Treasury.
And to do it in the name of trying to stop tax increases, when what we are doing is stopping the tax increases? Those fighting this are trying to let that bill expire so that everybody in America's taxes can go up, so that we can have more spending.
This is the old tax-and-spend debate with the spin of the politics of fear on it. And because of that, I reject this unanimous consent, and I object to it.
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Mr. CRAPO. We have had this debate for 10 years. The facts are out. The biggest beneficiaries were the lower middle and upper middle income families in America. The biggest hit, if we don't extend these tax cuts, will be the lower middle and upper middle income families in America.
Under that bill, we had more jobs, higher wages, higher benefits. The average family's net wealth went up to historic highs, and that is what is at stake right now.
The bottom line here is, you can throw all the numbers around that you want, but the people in America know we had the strongest economy in our lifetimes as this tax cut went into place. And if we see this tax cut expire, we have seen the National Association of Manufacturers and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce give us the data--a million jobs lost. We are going to see GDP and our growth go down by at least a percentage point, and the same kind of negative impacts on the economy will happen every time we have a massive tax increase in this country.
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