Five Senate Republicans join Democrats to rebuke Trump’s Brazil tariffs

By Morgan Rimmer, Ted Barrett, CNN

(CNN) — The Senate passed a resolution Tuesday aimed at ending President Donald Trump’s tariffs on Brazil, with five Republicans joining Democrats in a rare bipartisan rebuke of the president over trade policy.

Sens. Rand Paul, Thom Tillis, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski and former Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell sided with Democrats in the 52 to 48 vote.

McConnell has long been critical of Trump’s trade policy, and said in a statement ahead of the vote, “Tariffs make both building and buying in America more expensive. The economic harms of trade wars are not the exception to history, but the rule.”

The resolution, however, isn’t expected to be taken up by the House. Earlier this year, Republicans in the chamber added a measure to a procedural rule blocking members from being able to force a vote on the president’s tariffs.

The resolution aims to end the Brazil tariffs by terminating an emergency declaration from the president.

Sen. Tim Kaine, the lead sponsor of the resolution, said before the vote that the president’s use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act was not appropriate, considering that the inciting “emergency” that led to the tariffs was Brazil’s indictment of the country’s former president, Jair Bolsonaro.

“The emergency, with respect to Brazil, the unusual and extreme emergency that threatens the United States, that emanates in whole or in part outside the United States, is the Brazilian decision to prosecute Donald Trump’s friend. How is that an emergency?” he said, noting that the US has a trade surplus with Brazil.

Kaine added, “I’m against tariffs generally, unless they’re used very specifically. But I’m also against letting presidents just invent a reason to use emergency powers to do all kinds of things without coming to Congress.”

Trump’s executive order that kicked off the tariffs said that “the Government of Brazil’s politically motivated persecution, intimidation, harassment, censorship, and prosecution of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and thousands of his supporters are serious human rights abuses that have undermined the rule of law in Brazil.”

Kaine told reporters earlier Tuesday that senators will also force votes later this week aimed at tariffs on Canada and the global tariffs from Trump’s so-called “liberation day.” Earlier this year, the Senate voted to adopt the resolution ending the tariffs on Canada, however, the House did not act.

The Virginia Democrat acknowledged the House will not take up his resolution, and that they don’t have a veto-proof majority backing the measure in the Senate. But he insisted that adopting anti-tariff resolutions will send a strong message to the president.

“I did learn in the, in the first Trump term that the president is responsive to things like this. When he sees Republicans starting to vote against his policies, even in small numbers, that makes an impression on him and can often cause him to alter his behavior,” said Kaine.

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