Tiniest Crack In The Wall: Senate Votes To Dump Trump’s Vindictive Brazil Tariffs
from the a-glimmer dept
For the first time in ten months of near-total congressional capitulation to Trump, five Republican Senators broke ranks on Tuesday, siding with Democrats to block the nonsense tariffs Trump unilaterally declared on Brazil as punishment for their treatment of Trump buddy Jair Bolsonaro.
The US Senate on Tuesday approved a measure that would terminate Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs on Brazilian imports, including coffee, beef and other products, in a rare bipartisan show of opposition to the president’s trade war.
The legislation passed in a 52-48 vote, with five Republicans – senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine, Rand Paul of Kentucky, Thom Tillis of North Carolina and the former Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky – joining all Democrats in favor.
It’s a very small thing. But given how completely Congress—and particularly the Senate—has rolled over for every Trump demand since January, any defection is notable. And this one is particularly telling about where the cracks might finally start to form.
To understand why this matters, you need to understand just how absurd these particular tariffs were—even by Trump tariff standards.
The President doesn’t have the power to issue tariffs. That’s supposed to be a power reserved for Congress under the Constitution. Trump has been skirting around that by claiming that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) allows him to take certain actions in an emergency regarding trade, but the law does not explicitly allow him to impose tariffs under that authority. The Supreme Court is set to hear the case challenging Trump’s interpretation of IEEPA next week.
But even if SCOTUS somehow blesses this IEEPA theory, the Brazil tariffs are uniquely indefensible. Trump’s other tariffs at least gesture at the fiction that trade deficits constitute emergencies. Economically illiterate, sure, but there’s a pretext.
But we have a trade surplus, rather than a deficit, with Brazil. So, instead, Trump just claimed that the “emergency” was stupid actions by Brazil’s Supreme Court to push for censorship on social media. We’re among those who have called out some of those dumb and censorial decisions by Brazil’s Supreme Court. But that doesn’t make any of them an “emergency.” The other reason given: the fact that Brazil actually prosecuted Trump buddy Jair Bolsonaro for… trying to run a coup on the government. That is… not an emergency that lets Trump issue tariffs.
In other words: Trump declared an economic emergency because a foreign country’s courts made decisions he didn’t like about speech online and because they prosecuted his friend for attempting a coup. He may try to call that trade policy, but everyone can easily see that it’s a personal vendetta dressed up in legal language to give his most adoring fans a weak excuse to defend him.
Of course, the House (should Mike Johnson ever bring it back from vacation) is unlikely to move on this bill, and Trump will veto the bill anyway.
But… it’s one of the first real cracks in the MAGA cult red wall of giving Donald Trump anything the special boy wants. In this second Trump administration, it seems like one of the only times the Senate has actually voted against him.
So why now? Why this particular abuse of power?
Perhaps it’s that at least some Republicans can read polls too. This is the least popular president in modern history, and his policies (even the ones we were always told had popular support) are ridiculously unpopular as well. The Economist’s graphic on this is telling. Trump is negative on… basically everything. By a lot.
And, for stupidly unclear reasons, Congress just keeps letting him do whatever the fuck he wants to do.
The polls are brutal. His policies are historically unpopular. He’s tearing down the White House. He’s made the US into a global laughingstock. He’s sending troops into American cities based on myths his advisors are telling him. There are millions protesting in the streets.
And at some point, the political calculus shifts—even for Republicans in gerrymandered districts who’ve spent ten months scared shitless that the MAGA base will turn on them. Eventually, the risk of being primaried by Trump becomes less scary than the risk of being associated with a deeply unpopular president doing deeply unpopular things for transparently personal reasons.
So, no, this isn’t a big shift. But it’s a little one. An important crack in the wall, which hopefully starts to turn into more.
Filed Under: brazil, donald trump, ieepa, jair bolsonaro, lisa murkowski, mitch mcconnell, rand paul, senate, susan collins, tariffs, thom tillis, tim kaine
Comments on “Tiniest Crack In The Wall: Senate Votes To Dump Trump’s Vindictive Brazil Tariffs”
MAGA is finally starting to notice that Trump’s policies have done nothing but drive up proces of food, healthcare, labor, technology, and construction. The smarter GOP senators know that MAGA is too fucking stupid to hold Trump responsible, so it will land on them. And they also know they’re such fucking awful people, they’re gonna be looking for retribution and a few of them won’t make it out alive.
We’re exiting the Fuck Around stage, and enter the Find Out stage
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MAGA voters are blaming Obama and Biden for this.
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How do you figure? Murkowski, Collins, and Paul have been the least pro-Trump Republicans in the Senate since 2017; nothing’s changed there. And McConnell and Tillis have one foot out the door.
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They may be the least pro Trump Republicans, but they’re still Republicans and have largely followed along despite an occasional vote otherwise. And it is occasional. Tillis voted for everyone of Trump’s dipshit cabinet appointments. Murkowski and Collins voted for all but one. Rand Paul voted for 19, and blubberfish himself managed to only vote for 18. They’re just a little bit smarter than average GOP senator and are realizing that getting primaried is one thing, get shot by a farmer who’s watching his family starve and his farm get taken is a whole different ball age.
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Yep. Still is.
You’re seeing signs of a sea change. I’m seeing three senators do the same shit they’ve been doing for eight years and two who don’t give a fuck anymore because they’re retiring.
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You’re reading way to much into my comment. I’m not seeing a watershed moment. Hell, I’m not even seeing a change in behavior. I see 53 assholes continuing to do what’s best for them individually, as the GOP has done since Ford confirmed the pivot to fraud and criminality as fundamental platform of Republican ideology. Some are just able to see further ahead.
Notice meat prices.
USA, Brazil, China the top 3 Exporters of Beef.
Same Again Top 3 IMPORTERS of Beef.
For all the Ring around Rosy that Capitalism DOES. They have made the Mess we live in.
If you TRY to fix the system created it Can/Will explode in our faces. They SHOULD have Controlled this years and years ago.
As this also Affect Grains, Corn and about 60% of the Food stocks in the USA. You would Think our Food would be Cheap, But it isnt. When most veggies and fruits the farmer gets paid for at $0.03 per pound.
But then gets Shipped out, adn we Get Other Goods Back? Fair trade would mean the Cost would Negate itself as Equal on each side.
PS. The Corps in most of the other countries Seem to be Owned many times by USA corps. Well they are International NOW.
Given that Brazil is the biggest coffee (40% of the worldwide market) and beef (30%) exporter in the world, applying tariff is simply raising price of products consumed by dozen millions people (certainly half of them are Rep).
Even it’s only very simple math, for Donald, it’s advanced abstract arithmetic.
Trump is just demonstrating the big flaw of authoritarianism: The more you try to steamroll other people the more they’ll fight back. Even Trump’s own side is squirming due to his illogical decisions and all he can do is throw impotent attacks that only work against his own side if his angry mob targets them.
Some people think looking strong and threats are all you need to cow people into submission, but that’s completely backwards. The more you tighten your grip, the more people slip out of your hand. That’s why authoritarian countries rely on fear, lies, and corruption to maintain power; to the point that suppressing their own people becomes their main goal and they lose sight of how to govern properly. They start by trying to scare dissenters but eventually live in fear of their own people.
Democracy isn’t just a nicety. It’s how you get people to buy-in on your government by making them a part of it. Just like how employees work better if their bosses listen to them and treat them with respect. While jerk bosses drive off all their good workers then they complain that they can’t find good help. If all you want are mindless robots, you can’t complain when they act accordingly.
Seems pretty clear to me
And, for stupidly unclear reasons, Congress just keeps letting him do whatever the fuck he wants to do.
There’s nothing ‘unclear’ about it, and framing it as such is really giving them way too much credit. They’re going along with Trump’s dictatorial actions either because they support him and what he’s doing or because they’re too cowardly to push back and are prioritizing their personal cushy jobs as politicians over serving the country and/or the states that elected them.
Gerrymandering
This:
is flipped on gerrymandering. While geography ensures some deep red and deep blue seats will exist regardless of who runs the statehouse, the underlying principle is that those seats are inefficient and you should instead (like Wisconsin) stack as many opposing voters into single districts as you can, turning a 1M Dem vs 1M GOP election in to a 6R-1D delegation because you won 6 R+5 seats but they won 1 D+70 seat.
In principle, the gerrymandered GOPers are least worried about being primaried relative to being tied to Trump in a general election that will upend the gerrymandering math and boost Dem turnout.