Vice President JD Vance urged Senate Republicans to back the White House on tariffs, telling the Washington Examiner that voting to undo them this week would be a “big mistake.”
His comments come ahead of three Senate votes, forced by Democrats, that would repeal levies on Canada and Brazil and the global baseline of 10% Trump put in place earlier this year.
“Look, we talked about that,” Vance said as he left a Senate GOP lunch on Tuesday. “And the point that I made to my Republican colleagues, recognizing there’s a diversity of opinions about it, is that the tariffs give us the ability to put American workers first. They force American industry to reinvest in the United States of America instead of a foreign country.”
The Senate votes are largely symbolic, as the GOP House has already adjusted its rules to prevent repeal legislation from coming to the floor, but the subject marks a rare point of division between the White House and Senate and comes at a perilous moment for Trump’s trade agenda, with the Supreme Court set to weigh the legality of the tariffs in oral arguments next month.
The Brazil tariffs, imposed in response to the prosecution of Trump ally and former President Jair Bolsonaro, will be tested for the first time later on Tuesday and could be rebuked by the Senate. Swing senators, such as Thom Tillis (R-NC), signaled to reporters they would vote for repeal.
The Senate has already voted once to undo the Canadian tariffs, with four Republicans siding with Democrats back in April, and would have voted for the repeal of the global tariffs the same month were it not for two “yeses” that were absent. Those remaining tariff votes will come later in the week.
On Tuesday, Vance said a vote against the duties, which will take place with Trump in Asia, is tantamount to stripping the president of “incredible leverage” on the world stage.
Most Republicans are expected to stay aligned with the White House despite private reservations over restricting free trade, but given the GOP’s three-seat Senate majority, only a handful of defections are needed.
At the same lunch, Republican senators vented to Vance over a White House plan to lower food costs by importing beef from Argentina, which would undermine American ranchers.
VANCE SAYS TROOPS TO BE PAID DESPITE SHUTDOWN BUT WARNS OF ‘LIMITED POT OF MONEY’
“If you look at what we’re doing in Asia, if you look at all of the trade deals, the trade barriers that have been dropped by foreign countries on American consumers, they are happening because the president of the United States has been willing to use tariffs to give American workers and American farmers a better deal,” Vance said on Tuesday. “To vote against that is to strip that incredible leverage for the president of the United States. I think it’s a huge mistake, and I know most of the people in there agree with me.”
Critics of the tariffs have called them an overreach by Trump and questioned the legality of the emergency powers he used to impose them. Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), a Republican who supports their repeal, told reporters Tuesday that “fear” was motivating most Republicans to stick with the administration.