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

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I am honored to follow my colleague from Maryland, who has described so well the reasons we should oppose these tariffs.

I thank my colleague from Virginia, Senator Kaine, who has demonstrated once again his leadership that makes him such a great Member of this body.

I want to begin--and I hope the Presiding Officer will forgive me-- with a four-letter word. It is a word that I say to my children that they should never use: ``dumb,'' D-U-M-B.

These tariffs are dumb. They are also cruel, and they are stupid. They are imposed in the name of, perhaps, building manufacturing in this country, which they won't do, or in the name of raising revenue to cut taxes for the wealthy, which is adding insult to injury, or simply for vengeance. So much of what this administration does is for the purpose of vengeance and vanity.

Careless, cruel, reckless--that is what these tariffs are, particularly as directed to Canada.

Let's be clear. The tariffs proposed by President Trump are a tax. They are a tax. There has been no tariff ever imposed in the history of the United States of America that has ever lowered prices. These tariffs will raise prices. They threaten not only higher costs for everything from gas, to groceries, to rental housing, but they also deeply threaten a recession.

I have been reading a book called ``Freedom from Fear,'' written by a great historian, a professor at Yale named David Kennedy. ``Freedom from Fear'' is about the events and the misdirection and mistakes that led our Nation to the Great Depression.

What began as a recession, what started as a Wall Street problem, became a global depression because the world failed to realize that, even then, our economies were connected and that tariffs could hurt all countries when all countries adopted them, when a trade war ensued. And a trade war now is what we face.

Canada has long been one of our Nation's closest allies and trading partners. We have a bond with Canada that goes beyond simple economics, although, frankly, our relationship with Canada supports millions of jobs, protects the competitiveness of American businesses, and ensures our long-term economic prosperity.

Our countries have countless trade and investment agreements, and cross-border projects such as communications, highways, bridges, and pipelines have resulted in integrated energy networks and transportation systems. We have a longstanding defense and security partnership providing us with greater security than we could have alone.

And we share a border. But the border is a symbol of a bond that our people have in common, a friendship that goes deep, a heritage and a culture that we respect. These bonds will be betrayed by a reckless trade policy the administration is pursuing that threatens to derail that valuable--in fact, precious--partnership.

These tariffs are going to hurt all Americans. We have with Canada one of the most comprehensive and important trading relationships. I can go into the numbers. In 2024, Canada was the United States' second largest trading partner, with $761.2 billion in total trade--the largest single U.S. export market for goods. Every day, nearly half a million people and billions of dollars in goods and services cross that border.

But I want to focus on Connecticut for the moment because Connecticut demonstrates what will happen to America as a whole, and I represent the people of Connecticut. This regimen of tariffs will be catastrophic for Connecticut. Friends in Connecticut, listen to what these haphazard tariffs will do. Canada is Connecticut's single largest trading partner, accounting for 20 percent of our total trade in 2024, including 13 percent of our exports and 25 percent of our imports.

Consumers in Connecticut already face some of the highest electricity prices in the Nation, with an average cost of 28.16 cents per kilowatt- hour, compared to the national average of 16.26 cents per kilowatt- hour. Connecticut and New England as a whole get a significant share of our electricity from cheaper Eastern Canadian hydropower. The 10- percent tariffs proposed on energy resources from Canada will directly impact and drastically increase those electricity costs. ISO New England has estimated that this tax would add $66 million in annual consumer costs.

I hope President Trump will listen to the people of Connecticut and New England when it comes to electricity costs. Do not impose these tariffs.

The harm to Connecticut is far from limited to just energy prices. Some of the largest State industries--including aerospace, defense, advanced manufacturing, medical devices--all rely on trade with Canada to remain profitable. These industries source key production imports from Canada, including aerospace parts, critical minerals and metals, basic chemicals, and petroleum and coal products. In return, we export billions of dollars of goods to Canada.

We are talking about hundreds of thousands of people across Connecticut--jobs, employment--who all stand to see their livelihoods threatened if this tax is allowed.

It will ripple across Connecticut. It will reverberate through the country to the Presiding Officer's State, to Virginia, New York, Maryland, colleagues on both sides of the aisle.

The cost of living in Connecticut will rise drastically. We already have one of the highest costs of living in the country. Taxing these goods will put an undue financial strain on individuals and families across Connecticut but, most important, on people who can least afford a higher tax--our middle-income and lower income members of the workforce, working people in Connecticut who have to buy stuff depending on their paychecks--for groceries, for gasoline. A tax on those products will hit them in the pocketbook. It will hit their families. It will hit them at the kitchen table, when they go to the drugstore to buy pharmaceuticals, when they have downpayments on homes, on furnishings--across the board.

So I am not here to make a speech; I am really here to make a plea: Mr. President, please reconsider. These tariffs are fundamentally misguided. They are dumb. They are cruel, reckless, and careless. They play fast and loose with America's credibility around the world.

I urge my colleagues to vote yes on S.J. Res. 37 and join us in trying to save the American economy and our credibility around the world.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source