House Republicans have blocked Democrats from bringing up measures to end the tariffs enacted by President Donald Trump.
A bill that would fund the government through Sept. 30 includes a measure to prevent congressional resolutions from being put forth to stop the tariffs.
The bill was passed on March 11 and is pending before the Senate, where it needs 60 votes to overcome a filibuster.
The executive actions were also in response to the flow of illegal immigration from those countries into the United States.
The tariffs, which were enacted on March 4, were 25 percent on goods from those places with a 10 percent tariff on energy exports from Canada.
In response to the measure in the funding bill, Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) said on the House floor on March 11 that the Republican lawmakers “slipped in a little clause letting them escape ever having to debate or vote on Trump’s tariffs.”
Last week, Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.) introduced resolutions to end the tariffs on
Mexico and
Canada over the flow of fentanyl and other illicit drugs crossing their border into the United States.
“The administration’s 25 percent tariffs on two of our closest allies and largest trading partners are nothing more than a tax on American families—driving up prices, killing jobs, and threatening our economy,” said Meeks in a statement.
“This isn’t what Americans voted for.”
When asked about the possibility of a tariff-driven recession, Trump said on March 9 that his tariff plan would likely impact the economy, describing it as a “transition period” that would ultimately benefit the country.
“I hate to predict things like that. There is a period of transition because what we’re doing is very big,” Trump told Fox News in an interview that aired over the weekend. “We’re bringing wealth back to America. That’s a big thing. And there are always periods of ... it takes a little time. It takes a little time.”
In a Feb. 1 executive order, Trump accused the Mexican government of having “afforded safe havens for the cartels to engage in the manufacturing and transportation of illicit drugs, which collectively have led to the overdose deaths of hundreds of thousands of American victims.”
Regarding Canada, Trump stated in a separate executive order that “despite a North American dialogue on the public health impacts of illicit drugs since 2016, Canadian officials have acknowledged that the problem has only grown.”
Trump issued the Feb. 1 executive orders in accordance with the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.
The Act affords the president “national emergency powers to investigate and impose controls on transactions as well as freeze foreign assets under the jurisdiction of the United States” to “advance foreign policy objectives and protect the national security of the United States.”
Emel Akan contributed to this report.
