00:00Mr. President, I'm going to ask for a unanimous consent motion and reserve my remarks until after we've had a chance to address that motion, recognizing that we're dealing with some scheduling issues this evening.
00:19But I want to make sure that I reserve the right to actually make a statement about my unanimous consent request after we've had our exchange.
00:31So, as if in legislative session and notwithstanding Rule 22, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs be discharged from further consideration of S-151,
00:42and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration, that the bill be considered read a third time and passed, and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
00:52This is legislation that would address the tariffs that the President is considering.
00:59Mr. President, Mr. President, I object.
01:04The objection is heard.
01:07Mr. President.
01:10Senator from Vermont.
01:12Thank you, Mr. President.
01:15Like my colleague from New Hampshire, I want to make a statement after, but I want to, at the moment, accommodate the scheduling requirements of some of my other colleagues.
01:26So, I want to make a unanimous consent motion.
01:31As if in legislative session, and notwithstanding Rule 22, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Finance be discharged,
01:40and the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S-2383, that the bill be considered read a third time and passed, and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
01:55Is there objection?
01:56Mr. President.
01:57Senator from Idaho.
01:59Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I rise in opposition to S-2383, the Creating Access to Necessary American-Canadian Duty Adjustments Act,
02:10and S-151, the Protecting Americans from Tax Hikes on Imported Goods Act of 2025.
02:18I agree with my colleagues, who will speak in just a moment, that tariffs should be more targeted to avoid harm to small businesses.
02:27I made precisely that point at a hearing in the Finance Committee in May.
02:30Similarly, with less than two days to go to the August 1 reciprocal negotiation deadline,
02:38I appreciate that my colleagues, as well as our constituents, may be nervous about what comes next.
02:45However, at this juncture, these two bills are counterproductive to helping American families and businesses of all sizes.
02:52The President's historic trade negotiations are bearing fruit.
02:56President Trump already announced new trade deals with major trading partners, including the United Kingdom, Indonesia, Japan, and the European Union.
03:06I urge other trading partners to reach a deal by August 1st.
03:11Consequently, S-151 and S-2383 are counterproductive to the progress that President Trump has achieved
03:19and is poised to continue achieving in ongoing negotiations with our trading partners.
03:23On April 30, the Senate rejected the IEPA Disapproval Resolution on Reciprocal Tariffs for the same reasons.
03:32For these reasons, I again object.
03:35The objection is heard.
03:40The Senator from New Hampshire.
03:44On Friday, we may be facing the next escalation in the President's trade war.
03:50The tariffs that the President announced in April on virtually every country in the world
03:56are set to go into full effect tomorrow night at 12.01 a.m.
04:01Those tariffs are expected to add about $2,400 in costs for the average household per year.
04:09That's why I introduced the Protecting Americans from Tax Hikes Unimported Goods Act.
04:15This bill states clearly that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act cannot be used to place taxes on imports.
04:27If the President needs to block a dangerous product, he still can, under my legislation.
04:34But if there is a real threat, I think we'd want to stop it, not just tax it.
04:39That's what my bill does.
04:42It makes clear what the federal court has already found,
04:46that IEPA, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, does not authorize tariffs.
04:54Passing my bill would give businesses and families more certainty to plan for the future
04:58and to keep more of their hard-earned dollars in their pockets.
05:03Virtually every business in New Hampshire that I've visited since the President announced his proposed tariffs
05:11has said that in addition to the tariffs, the uncertainty is as difficult for them as the tariffs.
05:20So I'm disappointed that Senator Crapo decided to block this common-sense legislation.
05:27Sadly, I'm not surprised.
05:29But this bill would do so much to help families and businesses in all of our states.
05:34It would shield them from higher costs.
05:37And we've been hearing about some of these deals that Senator Crapo referred to
05:42that have been reached with the EU and Japan.
05:46But let's be clear about what those deals mean.
05:50Because even after those deals, those agreements, trade agreements,
05:56Americans are going to be left paying dramatically higher tariffs.
06:01A new analysis this week found that we will be paying the highest tariffs since the Great Depression.
06:08And we saw what those tariffs before the Great Depression contributed to.
06:12Now, we just saw a deal announced with the EU by the President and Ursula van der Leyen,
06:23the head of the European Commission, forcing 15 percent taxes on imports.
06:30Now, compare that to what we were paying in 2024 at this same time.
06:37That was about 1.5 percent.
06:40So under this great deal that the President negotiated with the EU,
06:47Americans are going to be paying 10 times what we paid last year.
06:52And with Japan, President Trump agreed to a 15 percent tax.
06:57That's also 10 times what we were paying last year.
07:01So let's don't pretend that these are some big wins.
07:04The President can announce that, but they're only a slight improvement on a crisis that the President created himself.
07:13At a time when people are rightly worried about the rising cost of living,
07:18Trump's tariffs amount to a tax to make everything from clothes to housing to food even more expensive.
07:26For example, last month, home prices hit a record high.
07:33And these tariffs could add more than $10,000 to the cost of a home.
07:39Coffee prices hit a record high earlier this year.
07:43And now President Trump wants to put a 50 percent tariff on Brazil, our largest source of coffee.
07:49As families do their back-to-school shopping, they're going to see higher prices for clothing and shoes.
07:59Those prices could go up by 35 percent by the end of the year.
08:05And for new parents, just for example, the price of one stroller at Walmart went up 50 percent in two months.
08:13And there are countless more products that are facing higher prices.
08:18So let's be clear.
08:20These tariffs do nothing to bring down costs.
08:24And in fact, they could add, as I said earlier in this statement, about $2,400 to the average household's yearly expenses.
08:34That's money that most families don't have just lying around.
08:37We have all of those costs from these tariffs.
08:41And yet at this moment, 30 hours from when the tariffs are going to go into effect,
08:46we still have seen no official notice implementing any of these deals.
08:52And that includes, by the way, no clarity on whether prescription drugs coming from Europe will face a 15 percent tariff starting in two days.
09:00I had a chance to meet with a pharmaceutical company this week,
09:07and they were lamenting what the impact was going to be on prescription drug prices because of the tariffs from the EU.
09:17Last Friday, I visited the Bruckner Group in New Hampshire.
09:21They supply equipment to domestic manufacturers and import some of their specialized machines, which they make, in Europe.
09:28The machines they bring in are sold to manufacturers here in the U.S. to make everything from IV bags to toothpaste containers.
09:38They have 80 employees in the U.S. and far more work on their machines at other companies across the country.
09:45They saw orders put on hold in April, and further investments in the U.S. are delayed because they can't be certain what the tariffs are going to be that they might face.
09:55So, they told me that even worse than the tariffs in some way is the uncertainty that's been created,
10:05the chaos that's been created by President Trump's announcements, because people don't know how to plan.
10:13Businesses don't know what to invest in.
10:15I believe in supporting domestic manufacturing.
10:19It's New Hampshire's third largest industry.
10:23But half of all imports are raw materials and intermediate goods, the very things that domestic manufacturers rely on.
10:32Instead of supporting domestic manufacturing, these trade policies are making future American manufacturing more expensive.
10:41And furthermore, they're threatening jobs.
10:46You know, my husband and I started out our married life owning and operating a small business.
10:54I know the hardest part of small businesses is growing and sustaining those businesses when you're uncertain about what's going to happen.
11:03And that's what these tariffs create, as I heard at Bruckner Group USA, as I've heard at every business I've visited.
11:15When I visited Bruckner four days ago, we had a 10 percent tax on everything imported from the EU.
11:24And at the time, that was set to jump to 30 percent this Friday.
11:30Then Sunday, we saw an agreement to set the tax at 15 percent.
11:34But with unclear exceptions to that tax, like, as I heard from the pharmaceutical company, with prescription drugs.
11:44I also heard from flight coffee roasters in Bedford, New Hampshire.
11:47They're worried about the president's threat to place new tariffs on Brazil, because they've already been paying a 10 percent markup on coffee because of these tariffs.
11:57Now they're facing a 50 percent tax on Brazilian coffee starting on Friday.
12:04And they have no choice but to charge consumers more.
12:09Their most popular product comes from Brazil.
12:11So this is a big hit to their business, and they can't be sure how this is going to impact their sales.
12:19And we should be clear, the U.S. has a trade surplus with Brazil.
12:27This threat is just because the president wants Brazil's independent judiciary to stop the prosecution of Brazil's former president.
12:36How is any business supposed to plan for that kind of rationale and for those kinds of swings?
12:46They need to secure financing.
12:48They need to place orders.
12:49They need to invest in order to grow in the months and years ahead.
12:53But building a new plant and moving production takes time.
12:58In some cases, it takes years.
12:59So how can companies plan when they don't even know whether the Trump tax, his tariff, is going to be 10 percent or 30 percent or something in between or something higher?
13:14New Hampshire is in a housing crisis.
13:17How can builders plan their costs when no one can tell them if there's going to be a new 30 or even 50 percent tax on their materials come Friday?
13:26And how can a family already struggling with high costs continue to pay the rent and put food on the table if their household expenses are going up $2,400 this year?
13:38And now on Friday, the administration is planning to make the goods businesses and families need 10 or 30 or 40 or 50 percent more expensive overnight.
13:50This president promised to lower the price of everything.
13:58Groceries, rent, energy.
14:03What these tariffs do is just the opposite.
14:07And we're hearing a lot of positive spin from the administration about the deals that they're striking.
14:13But let me end by making two points.
14:16First, we heard a lot of talk about 90 deals in 90 days.
14:24Well, we're way past that deadline.
14:26And we've seen six, count them, six announcements.
14:32And it's not even clear that Vietnam has actually agreed to what the president announced.
14:36Second, I want to remind all of us that these deals all force Americans and American businesses to pay a tax rate that is far higher than what we saw before the president engaged in this trade war.
14:55I talked earlier about how for both Europe and Japan, Americans will face a tax that's 10 times higher than we paid last year.
15:06That same trend holds across every deal he's announced.
15:12With Indonesia, he agreed to a 19 percent tax, four times what we paid last year.
15:17With the Philippines, a 20 percent tax, up from 1.3 percent, so 15 times what we paid last year.
15:25And for the U.K., where we have a trade surplus, again, a trade surplus, he agreed to a 10 percent tariff, again, 10 times what we paid in 2024.
15:36So, we should be very clear.
15:41All of these rates are an increase from what Americans have been paying since April.
15:47This president has raised average tariffs from 2.5 percent to more than 17 percent, the highest level since the Great Depression.
15:59Again and again, he is adding costs to American families and businesses.
16:03And what are these costs for?
16:07They're to finance tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, for the biggest corporations.
16:14The end result of the president's art of the deal on trade is higher costs for families, uncertainty for businesses,
16:23and alienated allies who no longer view America as a reliable partner to do business with.
16:32Thank you, Mr. President.
16:33Thank you, Mr. President.
16:34Thank you, Mr. President.
16:34Thank you, Mr. President.
16:34Thank you, Mr. President.
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16:45Thank you, Mr. President.
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16:49Thank you, Mr. President.
16:50Thank you, Mr. President.
16:51Thank you, Mr. President.
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