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

Floor Speech

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Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I rise today in strong support of our bipartisan resolution, which Senator Kaine and I lead, along with our colleagues Rand Paul, Mark Warner, and Leader Schumer.

Our resolution terminates the President's so-called emergency declaration related to the Canadian border and restores stability and common sense to our trade with our close ally and neighbor to the north, Canada.

The administration has used that declaration as a pretext to impose sweeping tariffs on a friend, on a neighbor, on an ally--which are taxes, paid by American consumers and businesses, on Canadian imports.

Back in April, this same resolution passed the Senate with bipartisan support. Under the National Emergencies Act, Congress must review and, if necessary, vote again every 6 months. Because the administration has refused to lift this so-called emergency and instead doubled down by raising tariffs on Canada to 35 percent as of August 1, with a threat of more, we are back on the floor today, and we will be back on the floor until this passes.

Just this past week, the President announced, as I noted, yet another 10 percent tariff hike on Canada--this time in retaliation for an Ontario ad--Ontario, one province. This would be as if the Governor of Texas put out an ad or if the Governor of California put out an ad. But President Trump used this as a pretext for another threat. And that ad accurately used President Ronald Reagan's 1987 remarks criticizing tariffs.

So that is a good way to begin: with President Reagan's remarks. He said, in 1987, though there are economic and national security circumstances during which tariffs are necessary, that, generally, ``high tariffs inevitably lead to retaliation by foreign countries and the triggering of fierce trade wars. Then the worst happens: Markets shrink and collapse; businesses and industries shut down; and millions of people lose their jobs.''

This new tariff hike isn't about security. It isn't even about our economy. It is just about the President's personal grievances, and Americans are the ones paying the price.

Since these chaotic, on-again, off-again tariffs began in March, cross-border travel and trade have both fallen precipitously. In Minnesota, we say we can see Canada from our porch. Our people go back and forth all the time--sometimes for jobs, sometimes to visit relatives and friends, and sometimes, of course, for vacations. We welcome Canadians all the time.

I was, in fact, at the Minnesota Frost game in which they played the Charge, a Canadian team, a women's professional hockey team. It was a joyous event with our Canadian neighbors.

You see, we know now, the World Series, one of the most exciting World Series between the Toronto Blue Jays and the Los Angeles Dodgers.

This isn't just some faraway place to us. These are our friends and neighbors. But yet, despite all of this incredible history of friendship and booming economic gains because of all the back-and-forth and travel, trips from Canada to the United States are down roughly 20 percent from last year. Towns in the United States are having to put up signs that say ``We love you, Canadians'' because they feel so dissed by this administration.

They are saying: What is happening? We were the first ones on the ground after 9/11 from another country.

The Canadians were there.

We were the ones that stood by your side in so many foreign wars. We are the one that, for so many of our States, is the No. 1 trading partner. How can this be happening?

And, frankly, it pisses them off, and so individual families are making decisions--are deciding: Well, we are not going to go to America. Maybe we will go to Mexico. Maybe we will go to another country. Maybe we will stay in Canada. But we are not going to travel there.

The average foreign visitor spends about $4,000 when they come to America.

We are not going to eat their food. We are not going to go to their restaurants. We are not going to stay at their hotels. We are not going to fish in their lakes.

You name it, that is what the people in my State are seeing. And everything from manufactured parts to whiskey have dropped sharply. And small businesses, farmers, and manufacturers are losing business.

This is not how our economy was supposed to work, if you believe in capitalism, if you believe in trade, if you believe you just can't put your head in the sand and think, ``Well, we are just going to be on our own,'' when 95 percent of our potential customers, particularly in the agriculture area, are outside of our borders. We should be exporting more goods, and we should be encouraging more trade.

The President shouldn't be able to just wake up one day and see an ad he doesn't like on TV featuring a Republican President by a province in Canada and decide, ``I am just going to hike up another 10 percent''-- or something happened in Brazil--and I congratulate Senator Kaine and Senator Paul on their recent overturning from this body--finally, enough is enough; we are asserting our power. You are not going to be able to just put a 40-percent tariff on Brazil, a country with which we have a trade surplus, simply because the guy is facing a trial there, and the President doesn't like it. No, this is not how this works. It is not how it works under the Constitution. It is not how it works under the law.

This resolution is about drawing a line in the sand and saying you cannot abuse your emergency powers to start an unjustified trade war; you cannot abuse your emergency powers to hurt one of the finest relationships in the world; and you cannot drive up prices, eliminate jobs, and put in place a national sales tax that experts now predict will altogether--the tariff tax--cost the average family nearly $2,000 per year.

And they are seeing it every day in their grocery bills. They are seeing it when they want to go out and buy tools. They see it when they are going out to buy audio equipment.

Minnesota's No. 1 trading partner, one of our country's top 2 trading partners, and one of our most trusted allies--that is Canada. We export more goods to Canada than we do--in Minnesota--to our second, third, and fourth largest markets combined. In 2024, Minnesota's goods trade with Canada, including ag products, machinery, and medical devices, amounted to roughly $22 billion--$22 billion. That is more than a quarter of all the goods that we export, a major hit for our State.

I chair the Canadian-American Interparliamentary Group. I frequently meet with our partners in Canada. A number of Senators, including Senator Kaine and Senator Shaheen and Senator Welch and Senator Kevin Cramer of North Dakota, a Republican--we went up there together to Ottawa a few months back, met with Prime Minister Carney. And as the Prime Minister said recently, the U.S.-Canada relationship has become ``mostly transactional.''

That is not the story of our friendship with Canada. Canada, as I mentioned, fought alongside us in two World Wars. They are our partners in NORAD and NATO. They helped us get our supply chain back in order after the pandemic--and, yes, we helped them. Canada is setting historic new goals to contribute to our collective defense, planning to triple defense spending over the next decade--new equipment, new infrastructure, new technology--to strengthen our NATO alliance, which means strengthening our own national security.

But rather than supporting a thriving Canadian economy that would enable the government to fulfill those goals, the tariffs that the President keeps slapping on this great ally will hinder our potential and Canada's. These tariffs also undercut the very trade deal the President himself once called the most ``modern and balanced agreement in history''--that is, the USMCA, the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement.

I supported that agreement. I was one of the first Democrats--in fact, the first one during that election, the 2020 election--that actually came out and said I supported that trade agreement on the debate stage because I felt it was so important.

So why would the President take this jewel of a trade agreement--that albeit needs to be changed as we go forward and reviewed, which is mandatory this coming year, for things like dairy and other things-- that has been acknowledged. We would like to see some changes to it. But why would he take this incredibly important agreement and just say it doesn't matter?

The kind of uncertainty that we are seeing with these tariffs shakes business confidence across North America. These tariffs are paid by families: groceries, clothes, housing. Homebuilders say higher material costs from tariffs are adding as much as $10,000 to the cost of a new home. Americans looking for a new car are paying more than $3,000 more for an American-made vehicle. And of course it is increasing the cost of cars made in America because parts come from Canada.

And this is an important point: The tariffs are not just about raising the prices on the goods that we import; they are also driving up prices across the board on all types of goods and services-- electricity costs. If we continue down this path, as I noted, the average family will likely see a $2,000 increase per year.

This might not mean a lot to some of the President's friends and family members, billionaires on his Cabinet. They are not going to care about this $2,000 a year. That is true. They are not going to care. But people right now, that are already faced with all these problems with healthcare, which is a fight that is raging right now, about this budget, they can't handle it.

Tariffs, as I noted, can be an important tool for countering other countries' unfair trade practices. I supported some of the steel tariffs that were more narrow from the former Trump administration and the Obama administration and the Biden administration in order to make sure that our iron ore--very key to my past and our future--mined in northern Minnesota--my grandpa was an iron ore miner--that that continue.

But that is not what we are talking about with the President's action here. The broad emergency power statute enacted from 1977 that the President has used to justify these across-the-board tariffs didn't even mention the word ``tariff.''

My colleagues and I have filed an amicus brief to the Supreme Court. That case is going to be heard next week. But it is not the only answer. The answer should be that Congress asserts its power, even though I believe that the use of the statute is clearly illegal and I believe, as the underlying court--which was made up of the initial trade court: a Trump judge, an Obama judge, and a Reagan judge--yes, they still exist. They unanimously, the three of them, said that this was an illegal use of the statute.

But this, today, is about something else. It is about us asserting our own power, stopping the chaos with changes over 100 times in these tariffs: small brewers paying for aluminum cans that can't afford them, furniture makers paying more for lumber, and family-owned tourism businesses in my State suffering.

If the Trump administration wants to address trade disputes with Canada--and the Prime Minister is clearly open to that--it should work in good faith with our neighbors to strengthen the USMCA trade agreement that the President himself originally negotiated.

Our bipartisan group of cosponsors understands this. This isn't about politics. It is about jobs, economic stability, and respect for the successful agreement that we committed to in the past. It is why this resolution has support from the United Steelworkers, the International Association of Machinists, North America's Building Trades Unions, and the AFL-CIO. The Chamber of Commerce, the National Taxpayers Union, and the National Retail Federation have all endorsed this resolution.

These are voices from every corner of the political spectrum, every part of our economy. Maybe we should be listening to them and not be a rubberstamp, I say to my colleagues. It is time to stand up. Otherwise, why are you here?

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Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, in conclusion, I want to say this: One, thank you to Senator Kaine and Senator Warner, the two Senators from Virginia, for their leadership on this important resolution; Senator Wyden for all of his work; Senator Rand Paul and others who have stood with us, who have stood with capitalism, who have stood with this idea that trade matters and that our country is stronger when we do business and sell our goods across the seas and to our friendly neighbors like Canada.

Let me start with Canada. As the head of the Inter-Parliamentary Group with Canada, I spent a lot of time working with the Canadians. It was one Embassy, years ago, when America was disliked by a lot of countries, that displayed on their Embassy huge banners that said: ``Friend, Ally, Partner.''

For so many of our States, they are our biggest trading partner. They fought alongside us in two World Wars. They are our partners in NORAD and in NATO. They worked with us together on supply chains and getting them back working after the pandemic. They are setting new historic goals, Canada is, to contribute to our collective defense, planning to triple defense spending over the next decade.

So what does this administration do? Slap them with a 35-percent tariff. And then, just because the President woke up in the morning and didn't like an ad that quoted a beloved Republican President, Ronald Reagan, didn't like it, he said: Well, I am going to give them 10 percent more.

Yet this is a country with which we share a trade agreement that this President negotiated with Mexico and Canada. If you want to make changes, like for dairy or other things, do it in the review of that agreement. Don't do it like this to a neighbor and friend.

Secondly, what do these tariffs mean to America? mean to the people in our country? Combined, they have been changed over 100 times--total chaos. Inflation is up. Manufacturing jobs are down. Small farm bankruptcies are at their highest levels in 5 years, and every Senator in this Chamber has heard from their beef producers or heard from their soybean farmers. What is happening right now, as one of my farmers called it, is a ``perfect storm of ugly.''

For an individual family right now, these tariffs mean a $2,000 tax per family. Tools are up. Audio equipment costs more. This is the effect of this tariff policy on individual families in America.

So we can have high-ended debates here, but at home, they are looking at their grocery prices. They are looking at their markets, their family farms--that they spent a century there, they are next in line to take it over--drying up. That is what these tariffs are about.

Then, finally, this President cannot keep abusing his power like this. There is a reason, when you look at the numbers, who supports this resolution: United Steelworkers, International Association of Machinists, North America's Building Trades Unions, the AFL-CIO, the Chamber of Commerce, the National Taxpayers Union, the National Retail Federation have all endorsed this resolution.

But, unfortunately, with a few exceptions, our friends on the other side of the aisle are just rubberstamping what this President wants.

Well, it is time for us to stand up. This vote is about reasserting Congress's constitutional role, article I, section 8, of the Constitution gives Congress--not the President--the power to impose tariffs and regulate commerce with foreign nations. We must stand up for American workers, businesses, and consumers and remind our allies and ourselves that America keeps its word.

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