Tariff Transparency Act of 2025

``Taxation without representation is tyranny,'' bellowed James Otis in the days and weeks and years leading up to the American Revolution.

This became the rallying cry of American patriots: No taxation without representation. The American Patriots thought that a distant Parliament in England where they had no representation had no right to tax them.

This was the rallying cry: ``No taxation without representation.''

Our Founding Fathers believed so strongly in this, they embodied it in our Constitution. Our Constitution doesn't allow any one man or woman to raise taxes. It must be the body of Congress.

Now, this wasn't new. This was part of maybe a thousand-year tradition from Magna Carta on. In Magna Carta, it is stated:

No taxation without the common counsel of the realm.

Even at that time they were chafing at one man, the King, determining the taxes for the land.

One hundred years before our Revolutionary War, in the English Civil War, there was a debate over parliamentary supremacy versus supremacy of the King. They did not want to pay taxes that weren't approved by the Parliament.

In 1683, the New York Charter on Liberties, the beginning charter for the colony of New York stated:

No taxation without representation.

And after this English Civil War, the English Bill of Rights embodied: No taxation without the consent of Parliament. This principle was longstanding. It was nonnegotiable. This was what sparked the Revolution. And, yet, today we are here before the Senate because one person in our country wishes to raise taxes.

Well, this is contrary to everything our country was founded upon. One person is not allowed to raise taxes. The Constitution forbids it.

The Constitution was so concerned with the power of taxes--which some have said the power of taxes is the power to destroy--but our Founding Fathers were so concerned with this, that they said: No, the President will not have the power to legislate. The President will not have the power to tax. Only Congress will be able to tax the people and only by originating tax bills in the House.

It was that specific. They were so mortified. They were so worried by having a monarchy. They were so worried about having all the power gravitate to the Executive, that they said: We must split the power.

They based a lot of their thinking on Montesquieu. Montesquieu wrote in the 1740s--40, 50 years before our Constitution. Montesquieu wrote that when the legislative and executive powers are united in one, there can be no liberty. This is something that our Founding Fathers took to heart. They said: We must separate the powers. We must, at all cost, limit the power of the Presidency.

This isn't about political party. I voted for and supported President Trump, but I don't support the rule of one person. We are set--the President is set--to have a 25-percent tax on goods coming from Canada and Mexico. This is a tax--plain and simple--on the American people.

But one person can't do that. Our Founding Fathers said: No, that would be illegal for one person to raise taxes. It has to come to Congress. It has to originate in the House. This has gone on for 200- and-some-odd years.

You can't simply declare an emergency and say: Well, the constitutional Republic was great, but, gosh, we have got an emergency. The times are dire.

The Supreme Court has repeatedly said: There are no exemptions for emergency.

There was no exemption for a pandemic. There was no exemption for emergencies. The taxation clause stands.

It is an important part of the Constitution: Taxes must originate in the House. They must be voted on in Congress. No one man can raise taxes on the people.

They are set to do this through a process in which an emergency has been declared. But realize this: One person declares an emergency, the President. And even if we are successful, which I think we will be successful here today--a majority will vote to say: This is wrong- headed, and the emergency should end. It would have to go to the House. But even if we were successful in the House, the President would veto it. It would take a two-thirds vote in order to stop an emergency. That is such a burden that we need to consider reforming the emergency powers and reversing this.

I think a President can have times that there are emergencies and the President can declare an emergency. But it should last 30 day, at most. At the end of 30 days, the emergency would be brought to the people's House--the House of Representatives and the Senate--and we would vote to affirm or uphold the emergency.

Right now, the pretense of this emergency is fentanyl. I don't discount fentanyl. I know families who have lost kids to fentanyl. But there is more fentanyl going from the United States into Canada than there is from Canada going into the United States.

There is no emergency. The Canadians have actually been cooperative with us and said they will try to do even more. The problem isn't in Canada.

Even if the problem is valid, even if that is something that we all agree on,

you can't have a country ruled by emergency. You can't have a country without a separation of powers, without checks and balances.

Madison put it this way. Madison said that we would pit ambition against ambition; that all men--and, frankly, all women--are motivated by self-interest and the self-accumulation or aggrandizement of power; and so we would limit their power by pitting ambition against ambition. We would give some of the power to the House, some to the Senate, and some to the President. There would be checks and balances in a jostling of power, but we would check and balance each other.

Part of the problem we face today with this emergency, though, is that Congress has abdicated their power--not just recently, not just for this President. This is a bipartisan problem. I am a Republican. I am a supporter of Donald Trump. But this is a bipartisan problem.

I don't care if the President is a Republican or a Democrat. I don't want to live under emergency rule. I don't want to live where my representatives cannot speak for me and have a check and balance on power.

One person can make a mistake. And guess what: Tariffs are a terrible mistake. They don't work. They will lead to higher prices. They are a tax, and they have historically been bad for our economy.

But even if this were something that was magic, and there was going to be a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, I wouldn't want to live under emergency rule. I would want to live in a constitutional republic where there are checks and balances against the excesses of both sides, right or left.

If one person rules, that person could make a horrible mistake.

On things so important as war, it is the same thing. We don't want a President just to go to war because a President might get angry with some country or have a vendetta. We are supposed to vote. That is why there is a declaration of war. War originates also in Congress.

But we have lost so many of these things and so much of this. It is Congress's fault for giving it. Over the last 70 years, there are probably a dozen pieces of legislation where Congress said to the President: Here, take this power. Create emergencies. Put on tariffs. Negotiate for us because we are too feeble-minded to do it ourselves.

But the thing is, the Constitution doesn't let us give our power away. There is something called the nondelegation clause, and it says that we are not allowed to give power away. We can't just say: Here, Mr. President, take it.

In this particular case, it is even worse. The rule of law--IEEPA is the acronym for it--has never been used for tariffs before and doesn't mention the word tariff.

So this isn't something that was targeted in times of need: The President can have the power to put on tariffs. It never says that. This will be an extraordinary use of something never intended to be a way to have--unilateral--one single person invoke a tax on the people.

With regard to tariffs, let's be very clear. Tariffs are simply taxes. Tariffs don't punish foreign governments. They punish American families. When we tax imports, we raise the price of everything from groceries to smartphones, to washing machines, to prescription drugs. Every dollar collected in tariff revenue comes straight out of the pockets of American consumers.

Conservatives used to understand that tariffs are taxes on the American people. Conservatives used to be uniformly opposed to raising taxes because we wanted the private marketplace, the private individuals to keep more of their incomes. So we were always for lower taxes. And yet now the mantra that is coming is: We want higher taxes.

What happened? Did we, all of a sudden, give up all of the things we used to believe in as conservatives?

I, for one, haven't. I still think more taxes is bad for the economy. More money taken out of the productive sector, the private sector, given to the government is a mistake.

To those who still call themselves conservatives but now support tariffs, let me remind them that Milton Friedman said tariffs ``raise prices to consumers and waste our resources.''

To those who still have a fond memory of Ronald Reagan on my side, Ronald Reagan said:

Protectionism costs consumers billions of dollars, damages

the overall economy, and destroys jobs.

Ronald Reagan's vision for America can be seen in our trading relationships with Canada. In 1986, President Reagan said:

Our trade policy rests firmly on the foundation of free and

open markets. . . . I . . . recognize the inescapable

conclusion that all of history has taught: The freer the flow

of world trade, the stronger the tides for human progress and

peace among nations.

And it is absolutely true. If you look at a chart or a graph of world trade over the last 70 years, it has gone like this. We have been trading more with each other. If you look at a world map of prosperity, it is the same curve. It is a hockey stick. It is going up exponentially.

If you look at a curve of poverty, 100,000 people are escaping poverty every day around the world, and it is because of international trade. Trade is good, not bad.

Think about it. If you buy something, you are trading. If you go to the store and you buy a smartphone, and you give them $1,000, you want that smartphone, and you don't lose. It doesn't matter where the money went; you got your smartphone. You only give money to somebody for something if you want it. If it is a voluntary trade, it is always equal. Well, it is, actually, always mutually beneficial.

And so when people say: Oh, we have lost, and China is winning, and China is winning, and we have a trade deficit with China--America doesn't trade with China. An individual buys a product. You are the trader.

When you go to Walmart and you buy something at Walmart, and you say, ``My goodness, I can get this TV for $200 less than I can get it if there were only domestic TVs,'' you are the contractor. The U.S. Government didn't buy the TV; you bought the TV, and you did it because you saved $200. You are now $200 richer and can go somewhere. You can buy gas to go on a trip somewhere.

If trade were bad, you wouldn't buy the TV. You made the decision; the government didn't.

Our government doesn't trade with their government. Our individuals buy products from their individuals. If it is a voluntary trade, everyone benefits or the trade doesn't occur.

It is perhaps no surprise, then, that the United States and Canada share the world's longest international land border and are continuously at peace.

Canada is a great customer of ours. In fact, Canada buys more American goods than China, Japan, England, and France combined. So do we want the Canadians to buy less of our stuff or more of our stuff?

It is a crazy notion to put a 25-percent tariff on this enormous amount of goods. There are predictions that cars are going to cost $10,000 more because the cars go in and out. We have cars made in Kentucky, but some of the parts go to Mexico. Some of the cars go to Mexico. Some go to Canada. They come back--a $10,000 increase. Do you love the idea of tariffs? Is it such a great word to pay $10,000 more for a car?

Canada is also the leading provider of grain, livestock, meat, and poultry. The United States imported $97 billion worth of oil and gas from Canada last year. Canada is a major provider of cars, car parts, steel, lumber, aluminum.

This amount of trading demonstrates that no American will be able to avoid the high taxes, the high prices. They will be forced to pay because of tariffs. The taxes on Canadian imports will come at a great cost to American families. The taxes on Canadian imports will make the cost of food, fuel, cars, and furniture more expensive.

The former conservatives that now sing a populist tune know deep down that their advocacy of higher taxes will cause suffering for the American family. The converts to this protectionist faith cannot help but acknowledge that even they know that the tariffs will raise prices. They admit it readily. The tariffs that they put on in 2019 are still punishing the farmers in our country to such an extent that the farmers are still asking for more subsidies.

When the Trump tariffs went on in 2018, 2019, the farmers immediately

complained, and they were given $20 billion of taxpayer money. That is an acknowledgment that the tariffs hurt farmers.

So we are going to do it again, and they are all lining up. People say we are going to have to bail them out.

Are we going to have to bail out the car companies? Are we going to bail out everybody that is going to be hurt by these tariffs?

It is not a good idea.

The administration is currently considering a bailout for farmers. The idea that the American taxpayer will have to bail out an industry to dull the pain of tariffs is not a novel one. We have seen this one. We have seen this story.

What our parents told us when we were kids is still true today: Actions speak louder than words. The supporters of tariffs know that their policies impose suffering, and they are willing to spend your money to alleviate that harm. So they know tariffs are going to hurt farm exports. So they are going to take your money and give it to the farmers.

Well, what kind of policy acknowledges: Hey, I have got a terrible policy. I am going to hurt these people. We will just give them some of your money.

It makes no sense at all.

In addition to the previous costs, the Peterson Institute estimates that tariffs will cost the average family $1,200 a year. The Budget Lab at Yale University estimates that tariffs will cost the average family $4,200 a year. In fact, according to the analysis, tariffs could cost the least fortunate families on average $2,400. The middle class will likely pay higher costs of about $3,000. Tariffs are a cost. Taxes are a cost. If you tax a good, it is added on to the cost. This is what happens. It happens whether inflation is the tax or whether the tax is a tariff. It adds to the cost of goods, and it will be passed on to the consumer.

The average American family won't get the bailouts though. If you are a special interest and the taxes hurt you, the tariffs hurt you, you will get a bailout. But if you are just an average person working for yourself, self-employed, and the tariffs cause all of your groceries to go up and cause your electronics to go up, no one is going to help you; you will just pay higher prices. If you think the cost of eggs is high, just wait until the tariff hits.

Tariffs will raise the price of a car between $5,000 and $15,000. Despite arguments to the contrary, Americans know that tariffs are a tax they will have to pay. That is why vehicle sales jumped almost 13 percent last month--because people are trying to buy their cars before the tariff gets on their car and raises the price. People are smarter than politicians. That is nothing new.

It is not just cars that will be more expensive as a result of tariffs; energy will be more expensive. Gas prices in some parts of the country could see a 15- to 30-cent per-gallon increase in price.

According to the National Association of Home Builders, the building of a single-family home could become up to $10,000 more expensive. Why? Because we import lumber. We import steel. If we make it more expensive to import lumber from Canada and steel from Canada, the price of your house goes up.

Look, people already can't buy a house because interest rates are so high. Young people are living in apartments. More and more, people feel stuck in their life, and we are going to add to the price of lumber and steel to make homes even harder to purchase? It is a terrible idea.

Washing machines were already almost $100 more expensive as a result of the original tariffs 4 years ago.

Here is really bad news: Even beer will become more expensive. A professor at Northeastern University states that a six-pack of Corona could go up by 45 cents, but a small craft beer could be increased by as much as $1 a pint.

The former and never-were conservatives who try to sell tariffs as anything other than a tax cannot fool the American people, who know that their purchasing power will be weakened with every new protectionist measure unilaterally imposed by the White House.

None of these tax hikes are necessary. The populists argue that the threat of tariffs is needed to force Canada to stop the flow of illicit drugs. In fact, one of the social media posts today said there was going to be a tariff on fentanyl. Really? You think the drug dealers are going to pay a tariff on fentanyl? Fentanyl is not being tariffed. That is some kind of mistaken notion. This isn't going to happen. As I have stated, there is more fentanyl going from the United States into Canada than there is coming from Canada to the United States.

It is not a real emergency. It is being used to place a tax on the American people.

But already we have seen a response from Canada. In response to the threat of tariffs, Canada announced a $1.3 billion plan dedicated to border security, to up border security on fentanyl. Yet the tariffs are still coming despite their help. They have also announced more tariffs as well.

The threat of tariffs seems to have worked. We need not make Canada and America go through this when they have already responded to our request.

The chaos of one day the tariffs are on, one day they are off, the next day there is a loophole for this industry or that industry, is chaotic and is leading to turmoil in our markets.

A week ago, when the thought of tariffs came forward, the markets plunged to historically low levels.

The tariffs on Canadian imports, the tariffs on Mexican imports, the tariffs on European imports--the chaos it creates in the marketplace makes it difficult to plan for businesses.

The interesting thing also about the tariffs is--some have said: Well, you know, the people will see that we are standing up for them with tariffs and we are for America first. Yet, when we put tariffs on historically, it has been Republicans.

In 1890, McKinley put tariffs on. He was all for it. So there were people lauding McKinley. In 1890, the big McKinley tariff goes on. Do you know what happened in 1892? Out of 170 Republicans, they lost 100 seats because prices went up with tariffs.

Has this ever happened before? Yes. It happened in the 1840s when they put on the ``Tariff of Abominations'' under John Quincy Adams. He signed it. Once again, the ruling party lost seats.

When is the last time this happened in dramatic fashion? Well, if you study history and you want to know when the Republicans went to their lowest ebb in the entire history of our country, it came after the Smoot-Hawley tariffs in the early 1930s. Hoover was President, a Republican. Republicans controlled Congress. They passed this dramatic tariff, which most historians and most economists now say prolonged the Depression for 10 years and caused the worst part of the Depression to actually be in 1937--7 years after the tariff and nearly 8 years after the stock market crash.

Do you know what happened to the Republicans in 1932? The Democrats won the Presidency, and they won the House. Do you know when Republicans got back in charge after 1932? It was 1994 in the House and in the eighties in the Senate. They went 50, 60 years into the desert because tariffs were such a turmoil to the country that the country rejected Republicans for nearly half a century.

The emergency declaration we are considering today is unprecedented. By declaring an emergency, the President invoked the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. They call it IEEPA, but it is an acronym. Don't get me started about government acronyms. It is a law that has been used to put sanctions on, like, Iran. That is what it was intended for. But it was never intended for tariffs and ``tariffs'' doesn't appear in the law.

Using this bill to impose tariffs is attractive to a President. He doesn't have to work with the messiness of democracy, the messiness of Congress. But do you know what? That messiness is a check and a balance on power. Unlike most of our trade laws that require several procedural hurdles, IEEPA just says ``Declare an emergency,'' and it becomes very hard for Congress to overturn this.

When the Trump administration first implemented tariffs on China, it took 11 months before the tariffs could take effect. By using IEEPA, the technique now, the tariffs have an almost immediate effect.

We are not at war with Canada. I don't even think we have real disagreements with Canada. They are an ally that buys more of our stuff than almost any other country in the world.

Expediency is not the same as legality, though. As legal scholars have pointed out, there is reason to believe that this bill--this IEEPA, this emergency bill--does not authorize the President to impose tariffs for at least two reasons.

First, despite broad powers conferred to the President by this act, the plain, simple text does not mention the ability to impose a tax, tariff, or duty. It runs counter to Congress's habit of clearly referencing tariff authorities in other trade statutes. This may explain why no previous President has attempted to use emergency powers to impose tariffs.

Second, it is difficult to see how using this emergency power, this IEEPA Act and a national emergency, to impose tariffs would comport with something called the major questions doctrine. Under this doctrine, the Supreme Court will reject claims of Executive authority on issues of vast economic and political significance. It is hard to imagine that a 25-percent tax on everything from Canada would not be considered to be of vast economic significance.

Congress has not clearly empowered this administration. I think it is hard to even argue that it is ambiguous. The power was never granted. This question is ripe, and this power is ripe to be rejected by the Supreme Court.

Hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of imports from Canada are at issue here. Clearly, this is a major economic question. Yet Congress has not expressly delegated the authority to impose tariffs to the President.

We need to return to constitutional government. We used to abide by the ancient principle of ``no taxation without representation.''

One of the first acts enacted into the law was the Tariff Act of 1789, which sought to generate revenue by placing a 5-percent tax on all imported goods and was signed into law, after passage by Congress, by George Washington.

Alexander Hamilton's ``Report on Manufacturers'' is well known. According to Professor Douglas Irwin of Dartmouth College, every tariff recommendation put forth in the report was adopted by Congress in 1792. But simply voting on tariffs does not convert them into a good idea. It could make them constitutional. It could make this legal if Congress voted on it. It would still be economically a bad idea.

As we move forward in this debate, you will see that there are people on both sides of the aisle who question really whether we should be ruled by one person or whether the power should be separated. To me, this is not a partisan question. Some will try to make it a partisan question. To me, it makes no difference whether the President is Republican or Democrat. This is about the distribution of power. This is about the separation of power. This is about the admonition that Montesquieu gave us that when the Executive power and the legislative power are united in one person, there can be no liberty.

Our Founding Fathers all believed that. They so feared the power of taxation that they gave it only to Congress. They so feared the power of taxation that they gave it specifically to originate in the House before it came to the Senate because the House was closer to the people, with elections every 2 years.

This goes against the traditions of our country. I stand to speak against these tariffs. I stand to speak against these emergencies. I stand against the idea of skipping democracy, of skipping the constitutional republic, of rejecting our founding principles, not because I have any animus toward the President; I do this because I love my country, and I want to see the division of power enabled such that it protects us all from the amalgamation of power into one person such that it can be abused.

Another name for ``emergency rule'' is ``martial law.'' Who would want to live under one person? That is the thing we all object to. In all the countries around the world that we object to is the idea that they don't have democratic rule.

We should vote. This is a tax, plain and simple. Taxes should not be enacted by one person.

So I will vote today to end the emergency. I will vote today to try to reclaim the power of taxation, the power of the tariff to where the Constitution designated it should properly be, and that is in Congress.

Mr. President, I thank Senator Kaine for his leadership on this issue.

President Trump's new tariffs are not ``Liberation Day''; they are ``Obliteration Day.'' They are going to be remembered as something that raised taxes on every American consumer, had foreign countries then attack businesses all across our Nation, all without a plan from President Trump to have an end game.

President Trump is just making this up, and we are going to have to wait to see how he responds when Europe attacks us, when Canada attacks us, when Asian countries now attack us. He is inviting an attack upon the American economy even as American consumers have to pay higher taxes.

So we are just at the dawn of the equivalent of an all-out war--trade war--with every other country in the world. And who is going to pay the price? American workers and American taxpayers. They are the ones who are going to pay the price.

Federal Judges

Mr. President, I rise tonight to speak about the outrageous calls we have been hearing to impeach Federal judges who have ruled against Donald Trump. That is right. Donald Trump and his extremist MAGA supporters think that if a Federal judge dares to rule against the President, that judge should be impeached.

Recently, Trump tweeted that Judge James Boasberg, the chief judge of the Federal district court here in Washington, DC, should be impeached because he ruled against Trump's use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport alleged Venezuelan gang members to El Salvador without any due process.

Elon Musk, whose Department of Government Efficiency has been on the losing side of several recent judicial decisions, has referred to Federal judges as ``evil'' and called for ``a wave of judicial impeachments.''

In the other body, MAGA extremists have taken up the cudgel and filed Articles of Impeachment against Federal judges who have ruled against the President, and then they receive political contributions from Elon Musk for doing so.

Just last week, Speaker Johnson even suggested eliminating entire Federal courts because their judges have dared to rule against Donald Trump. These calls for the impeachment of judges and elimination of courts are just the latest in salvos in a broad attack on the courts, on lawyers, on the rule of law by the President and by his allies.

I come to the Senate floor today to condemn this dangerous and un- American onslaught against the judiciary and legal profession and urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to speak out against it. Federal judges confirmed by the Senate and given life terms under the Constitution during good behavior are not like contestants on ``The Apprentice.'' You don't get to fire them because you don't like the way they are doing their job.

The President and his acolytes don't seem to understand this. With each call to impeach judges, they disregard and disrespect the Constitution; its separation of powers; its checks and balances; and its establishment of three coequal branches of government--one of which is a judiciary whose principal job, as the Supreme Court explained more than 200 years ago in Marbury v. Madison is to ``say what the law is''--to say what is constitutional--and that is precisely what the courts have been doing.

Since retaking office, Donald Trump has issued a series of Executive orders that are blatantly, patently, and obviously unconstitutional and illegal. Trump's arrogant belief that he can supersede the Constitution and the laws passed by Congress with an Executive order has spawned more than 100 lawsuits against his administration.

Federal judges across the country, judges appointed by Democrat and Republican Presidents alike, including Donald Trump himself, are doing the same job that judges have done in our country for centuries. They are interpreting statutes, making legal determinations, and upholding the Constitution of the United States.

They are moving swiftly to hear cases and, for now, preventing some of the most egregiously unlawful Trump policies from taking effect: revoking birthright citizenship, blocked; freezing all Federal funding, blocked; pulling down public health websites, blocked; capping funding for critical health research at the National Institutes of Health, blocked; denying gender-affirming healthcare to transgender youth, blocked; allowing Musk unbridled access to Social Security data, blocked; clawing back funds appropriated by Congress and obligated to my National Climate Bank, blocked by a Federal district court judge. And the list goes on and on and on--blocked, blocked, blocked, blocked.

In these cases, like any others, if the losing party disagrees with the judge's decision on what the law is, they can appeal it. What they shouldn't do is to call for the extraordinary step of impeaching the presiding judge. That is a remedy the Constitution reserves for only grave ethical or criminal misconduct.

That is why John Roberts, the Chief Justice of the United States, was compelled to issue a rare public statement after President Trump called for the impeachment of Judge Boasberg.

Without referring to the President directly, the Chief Justice nonetheless rebuked him, explaining that ``for more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement'' and ``the normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.''

Unfortunately, the MAGA extremists calling for impeachment of judges or the elimination of the courts don't care about this, the Constitution, centuries of judicial norms, the rule of law. They only care about one thing: fealty to Donald Trump.

The baseless calls for Chief Judge Boasberg's impeachment confirm that. This is a judge who was a Yale Law School graduate, who cut his teeth as a successful homicide prosecutor, who was first appointed to the bench by a Republican President more than 20 years ago, who was confirmed to the Federal bench in a 96-to-0 vote, and who was named by Chief Justice Roberts to a seat on the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court where he served a 7-year term, including as the court's presiding judge.

Yet this is the judge, widely respected throughout the judiciary and legal profession, who President Trump calls a ``radical left lunatic, a troublemaker, and an agitator.'' That is Trump talking about Judge Boasberg just because he ruled against the administration in a preliminary decision, which by the way, a three-judge panel of the DC Circuit Court of Appeals last week upheld on review.

So while Trump's ad hominem attack on Judge Boasberg was typically baseless, it and other attacks like it leveled against other judges are no less dangerous. They have given rise to increased threats against judges--a ``significant uptick'' as Chief Justice Roberts put in his report on the Federal judiciary at the end of last year.

Indeed, according to the Chief Justice, U.S. Marshals Service data showed a tripling of hostile threats and communications directed at judges over the previous decade.

Recently, judges have also experienced the swatting of their homes, the delivery of pizzas to their homes--actions intended to send a message: We know where you and your family live, where your children are. So reach the result which we want. Be afraid, be very afraid.

This is wrong. Very wrong. It is dangerous. It is intended to pressure judges in their decision-making that puts lives at risk. It deserves the strongest possible across-the-board condemnation by all Senators and all Americans.

Instead, my Republican colleagues have been awfully quiet, fearful of upsetting President Trump, who has followed the ``Godfather,'' part 1, playbook and made them an offer they can't refuse--a primary opponent if they just don't go along.

Finally, I have a few words about Donald Trump's unprecedented Executive orders targeting law firms and individual lawyers who have litigated against him. These orders have suspended security clearances, canceled

government contracts, barred employees from Federal buildings, and erected other obstacles that prevent lawyers from representing their clients.

Trump has even directed the Department of Justice to seek sanctions against attorneys who file frivolous lawsuits or engage in vexatious litigation against him.

So with Donald Trump coming after lawyers and law firms, it is gut- check time for law firms in our country, especially the big law firms that the President has targeted for revenge and retribution because of their lawyers daring to do their jobs and representing clients in cases against him.

I commend those firms like WilmerHale, like Jenner & Block, who are standing up, who are fighting back. And we need all law firms to stand up to this administration and to continue to stand up for the rule of law. And those that don't, especially those that seek to appease and accommodate the President out of fear their bottom line will suffer-- grave risk, grave harm to our liberties will, in fact, depend upon the lawyers who take difficult and unpopular cases, often against the government, and zealously represent their clients in those matters.

I will conclude with this: The attacks on our judiciary, the calls for the impeachment of judges, and the attempts to intimidate and retaliate against lawyers who dare to stand in defense of the Constitution are not just an assault on individuals, they are an assault on the very foundations of our democracy.

The courts are not pawns in a political game. The rule of law is not up for negotiation. If we allow this dangerous precedent to take root, if we tolerate threats against judges and lawyers fulfilling their constitutional duties, we set the stage for the erosion of the checks and balances that have safeguarded our Nation for over two centuries.

This is not about protecting one man. This is about protecting the principles that ensure justice and fairness for all Americans. It is time all of us as a nation to rise above partisan interests and defend what makes us strong; our commitment to the Constitution, to the independence of the judiciary, and to the rule of law. I urge my colleagues--all of my colleagues--and every American to stand with me in defending these sacred institutions, not for our political health but for the health of our democracy itself.

Madam President, I fully support the resolution of Senator Kaine, and I want to make three points.

No. 1, should Congress continue to abdicate its constitutional responsibility, ceding it to the Executive?

No. 2, I want to talk about the total fantasy--fantasy world--that the Trump economic agenda is grounded in, if you can use the word ``grounded.''

And then, third, I want to talk about how these tariffs will be a dagger in the heart of the Vermont economy.

First of all, the question for this institution is, Will we, as the U.S. Senate, accept the responsibility that each and every one of us as Senators has to stand up for the independent authority and responsibility of this institution?

As we know, our Constitution was based on the proposition of real suspicion of the accumulation of power in any one entity. What was told to us in the Federalist Papers is what we know: If you have the concentration of power in any institution, that concentration of power leads inevitably to the abuse of power.

The design of our Constitution was to have equal and independent branches. And what I am seeing is a lawless rampage on the part of the Executive being accommodated by an appeasing Congress, not standing up for its authority in many different areas, and then also an attack on the judiciary, as though the judges who disagree with an Executive position should be impeached. But our authority over the budget is being abdicated, as we saw in the CR.

But another area of authority for the Congress is the tariff authority.

A couple of decades ago, this Congress gave and delegated some authority to the President in a national emergency to impose tariffs. That authority was given with the expectation--and rightly so, in a mutually respectful civil society--that a President would use it for the intended purpose and with restrain, whether it was Republican or Democrat, and that national security had the connotation and implication of a military threat to our country, where there needed to be immediate Executive action to protect the citizens of this country.

What President Trump has done is run roughshod over that, showing no restraint in using that delegation of authority, not for a national emergency but for whatever his latest policy ideas are and whatever leverage he wants to extract.

We cannot allow that to happen and maintain the separation of powers. It is absolutely so fundamental to the long-term well-being of our country.

So Senator Kaine is absolutely right. This is not a partisan question. It is an institutional question. Do we see our responsibility for maintaining that system of checks and balances? I do. That is the heart of this matter, and it is as important as even the outcome of what this tariff policy may be.

Second, where does this tariff policy come from? It comes from the President who is claiming that it will be a new golden age if we impose these tariffs.

By the way, these are astonishing tariffs: South Korea, 25 percent; Vietnam, 46 percent; Taiwan, 32 percent; Switzerland, 31 percent; Malaysia, 24 percent; Cambodia, 49 percent. Do we realistically think there will be no retaliation against America for these tariffs? We know there will be.

Yet what the President seems to think--and this literally is a fantasy--is that the golden age of America was when we had the tariff policy that economic historians say caused the Depression, but he says, if we had had the tariff policy, then we wouldn't have had the Depression. There is literally no support for this.

So the President has come up with this fiction, and what he is good at is sales. He says it over and over again. He cloaks it in an appealing objective: We want to have jobs back in America. And that is certainly something all of us share. But this fantasy he has--and it is a fantasy--that high tariffs are going to ``make us rich'' and be paid for by other countries instead of our consumers--just ask anybody who goes to Target or Walmart how that is going to work out for them. Ask anybody who is going to want to build a house or buy a house, where the prices are going to go up probably $25,000 in Vermont for a house.

The third thing I want to talk about is very concretely in Vermont. This is devastating for us in Vermont. Our farmers get most of their fertilizer from Canada--a 25-percent increase. Our farmers are on the margin. They are operating on such a thin margin that a 25-percent increase raises the existential question of whether they stay in business.

Our maple sugar producers get their equipment largely from Canada--a 25-percent increase in the expense of buying an evaporator.

Vermont consumers and businesses--we in Vermont are along the northern border. I see my colleague from New Hampshire. It is the same for you. We get so much of our home heating fuel, so much of our gasoline to power our cars, and so much of our electricity from Canada, that at the end of that month, when you are juggling your checkbook and trying to make it balance, you are going to have a higher electric bill, and you are going to have a higher home heating bill. And every time you fill up, you are going to pay between 25 cents and 40 cents more a gallon because in northern Vermont, that is where our gasoline comes from.

How is that going to serve anybody's interest? How is that going to help the people who are working hard every day to try to make ends meet? It is going to be devastating for them.

And in addition to all that uncertainty, we have a responsibility to make, through policy, the lives of our folks in business, the lives of our farmers, the lives of our moms and dads easier, not harder. In this uncertainty that is the hallmark of the Trump approach and these higher costs that are absolutely legislated as a result of his policy or by Executive order, that is going to make life harder for all of the people that I represent in Vermont.

Instead of just using my words, I want to use the words of a lot of Vermonters. When we got word of these tariffs going into effect, we had a couple of roundtables up in northern Vermont, in St. Albans and in Newport. Obviously, I wanted to hear from voters. Here is how they say it.

And, by the way, this is not a partisan deal. This is somebody who is trying to run a business, somebody who is trying to pay their bills and support their family. It is a construction company, a vegetable farmer.

Stoni Tomson:

It feels like death by a thousand cuts.

Vermont Foodbank, Jason Maring:

We get some of our vegetables from the Quebec side of the

border. If the 25-percent tariff was applied in full, it

would be about a $130,000-$150,000 unbudgeted hit to our food

procurement efforts.

Catherine de Ronde of Agri-Mark:

The ripple-effects that this could have on energy markets,

and of course manufacturing, is very heavy.

Matt Cook from PC Construction:

I'm just concerned in general that it's going to further

stagnate the ability for some of these much-needed

construction projects to move forward.

Denis Bourbeau of Bourbeau Custom Homes. They build about three or four homes a year--a good business in Northern Vermont:

I can foresee the making homes unaffordable--which they

already are.

Another:

We would be strongly affected by the tariffs in terms of

the equipment costs for U.S. producers. . . . I'm very

concerned about the possible effects of this.

This is just another vivid example of that. Some of the hardest working people we have in Vermont are our loggers. They harvest logs and ship them up to Canada. And they will be paying a tariff when that log goes up. When it is milled and returned as lumber that can be used in home building, there will be a 25-percent tariff on that as that lumber returns. Who is going to pay for that--the home builder or the home buyer?

That is what is going to happen. How in the world is this going to lead to the

so-called golden age? The golden age is as much a fantasy as is the fantasy that tariffs were the visionary economic policy that will bring us to the promised land.

These tariffs, No. 1, are the authority of Congress, if we exercise our authority. They are not the authority of the Executive, and Congress should stand up for itself and assert its authority and protect the constitutional promise of the separation of powers because we know that the concentration of power leads to the abuse of power. And, by the way, that is exactly what is happening right now.

Secondly, let's not be deluded by a fantasy economic theory that is at the core of this. It just makes no sense. It has no credibility. It has no intellectual foundation. Who knows how President Trump came to believe in this so much that he asserts it?

But, third, if we look at what is the impact on the people we represent--the people who build homes, the people who farm our fields, the people who tap maple syrup, the people who run health clinics, the people who run food banks--and we ask them: Hey, how is this going to affect you? Will it help? Will it hurt? And when every single one of those people we represent, who are doing the hard work, day in and day out, say: Peter, this is a disaster--and we are going to vote for it? No way.

Thank you, Senator Kaine.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I want to start by thanking our colleagues from Virginia, starting with Senator Kaine, who brought us to this debate here on the Senate floor today on a very important question, and to my other colleague from across the Potomac River from Maryland, Senator Warner. We sometimes disagree on various issues. On this, we have solidarity across the Potomac River. That unity comes from a very simple result, which is that we are here to sound the alarm about the trade war that Donald Trump just unleashed today.

He calls it ``Liberation Day.'' If he had made this announcement yesterday, on April Fools' Day, people would have thought it was an April Fools' joke. But this is no joke, and it is not liberation day. It is a national sales tax day because that will be the result of the President's action--a sales tax on the American people, a national sales tax, because today the President announced he was levying massive, across-the-board tariffs on countless goods, making big promises but at the end of the day betraying the American people, who are going to be hit hard by rising prices.

We have heard the President make a lot of promises about what these tariffs will do. It is like a miracle cure. They are going to revive American manufacturing. They are going to stop fentanyl. They are going to balance our budget. They are going to make all of us rich, and all of those other countries are going to pay for it. The problem is, none of that is true. Other countries don't pay these tariffs; we do. It is a sales tax on goods imported from other countries. American importers pay the tax at the border, and they pass the cost on to the consumers. What else are they supposed to do?

American manufacturers that put together products here in the United States but import some of the parts they use in those products will face higher costs, higher prices on the parts they import. They are going to have to pass on those costs to American consumers, so they are going to have to jack up their prices.

When they jack up their prices, not only do American consumers pay more, but those American manufacturers and American producers, when they are exporting goods overseas, they are having to export at higher prices, and that makes their products less competitive overseas.

On top of that, it is a double whammy because when you have these big tariff increases on products from other countries, other countries aren't just going to sit back and take it. They are going to respond. They are going to retaliate. They are going to put tariffs on American products that we export to their countries.

What will happen then? That means that an American producer exporting

products overseas, whether manufactured products or agricultural products, their products are going to face higher prices in those countries. They will be less competitive, and people in those countries will buy less of those American products. So that means, here at home, they will have to lay off workers.

It is going to hurt the economy back home in both those ways.

We saw a little miniversion of this during the first Trump administration. Back then, Donald Trump raised tariffs on Chinese products, and China responded with retaliatory tariffs on many American farm exports like wheat, soybeans, and pork. What happened? Well, American farmers sold less of those products overseas. They got more expensive.

Do you know how we know this was all a big fake-out? When American farmers were not able to sell their products into China's market because of China's retaliatory tariffs, we bailed them out--we the American taxpayer. We spent $23 billion in taxpayer money from the American people to pay American farmers not to be more productive--they were productive--but because China raised tariffs on their products in retaliation for Donald Trump raising tariffs on theirs.

Look, we all recognize that tariffs can be an effective tool when they are used in a targeted way with strategic industries, but that is not what Donald Trump is doing. This is not strategic. He is starting an all-out trade war and apparently does not care about the consequences.

It is leading already to chaos in the markets. I am not going to go through all those because Senator Warner, Senator Kaine, and others have spoken to that. But at the end of the day, the direction we are heading could well take us into a recession.

As Senator Warner mentioned, some of the President's people have said this is going to be $6 trillion worth of tariffs over the next 10 years--by far the largest effective tax hike in American history.

Economists estimate that it will cost the typical American household up to $4,200 more per year. That is a whopping sales tax.

The National Association of Home Builders says that tariffs will make new homes cost up to 10,000 more, at a time when we are already facing an affordable housing crisis.

North America's Building Trades Unions sent a letter opposing these tariffs, saying:

We are seeing construction projects slowing down,

infrastructure investments being delayed, and economic

momentum weakening--resulting in smaller paychecks, fewer

jobs, and shrinking opportunities for skilled building trades

and workers.

A researcher at Cornell University said that a new car could cost up to $20,000 more because of all the back-and-forth across borders and all the additional tariffs that are applied each time a border is crossed. U.S.-made cars are estimated to increase by up to $3,000.

So buying a house, buying a car--these are all things that families save toward. So what this comes down to is a tax on the American dream.

These increased costs may not mean a lot to the billionaires in the President's Cabinet. After all, we had the Secretary of Commerce say recently with respect to Social Security benefits that, hey, if Americans didn't get their Social Security benefits one week, nobody would notice except the fraudsters. That is the kind of attitude we have from this administration when it comes to increasing prices that we will all experience as a result of these tariffs. They think people won't notice, but they will.

Finally, I do want to talk to the other part of this issue--and I am not going to belabor the point because others have spoken to it eloquently, especially the chief sponsor of this effort, Senator Kaine--which is that President Trump is abusing the International Economic Emergency Powers Act to apply these tariffs to Canada.

That is a law aimed at protecting our national security. It is a law that we have used against adversaries like Iran, Sudan, North Korea, and Russia. But here, President Trump is using it to target our longtime friend, our longtime ally Canada. He has declared a phony ``emergency'' on our northern border to target our friends there.

He claims that these punitive tariffs will somehow address the fentanyl crisis. Of course, we should be addressing the fentanyl crisis in the United States of America, and this Congress has done a lot. It needs to do a lot more. But in the fight against fentanyl, the Canadian people are, No. 1, our allies, and No. 2, they are not the ones who are causing the problem. Only 0.2 percent of fentanyl trafficked into the United States comes across the U.S.-Canadian border, and Canada is right now putting together a $1.3 billion plan to strengthen that border security and stop it altogether.

So this is a fake emergency declared by the President, putting on these massive tariffs. I will close with why, and we are going to find out more about this in the next couple of days.

I heard the chairman of the Finance Committee speaking a little bit earlier about how the proceeds from collecting tariffs might be counted and used to offset tax cuts which are going to be aimed at the very, very wealthy in this country--tax relief for the wealthy paid for in part by a national sales tax on all the other Americans in the country; paid for, as we have heard, by going after Medicaid.

So whether it is a national sales tax or other efforts aimed at the American people that will hurt the American people and hit them in the pocketbooks, that is all done in service to pay for tax cuts for the very wealthy, people like Elon Musk.

So I want to say thank you to the Senator from Virginia, Senator Kaine, for blowing the whistle on this phony action taken at our friend Canada, all as a pretext to increase tariffs, which amounts to a huge sales tax on the American people in service of a tax cut for the very wealthy.

I thank my colleagues.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I want to spend a few minutes first talking about Russia.

To get respect, you have to act respectfully. To be taken seriously, you have to act seriously. We know that. It is a matter of common sense.

President Putin in Russia is not acting with respect toward the United States of America or President Trump. President Putin is not acting seriously.

I don't know a single fairminded person with an IQ above his age who doesn't want peace in Ukraine. We all want to see peace in Ukraine. President Zelenskyy wants to see peace in Ukraine. President Trump wants to see peace in Ukraine. I thought President Putin did. I am beginning to wonder.

President Trump, who is leading these negotiations, first asked for a cease-fire. He said: For 30 days--maybe 45, 60 days--I am asking both Russia and Ukraine to lay down their arms.

President Putin said: No, I won't agree to a blanket cease-fire, but I will stop bombing infrastructure in Ukraine. He lied like he breathed. He continued to destroy civilian infrastructure in Ukraine.

Then President Trump said: OK. Let's try for a cease-fire in the Black Sea.

That would benefit both Ukraine and Russia, both of which use the Black Sea for maritime commerce. And, indeed, the world depends on a lot of the grain that they both export.

So President Trump said: Let's try for a cease-fire in the Black Sea and maritime security in the Black Sea.

President Zelenskyy said: ``Sure, I am with you,'' just like he said previously, ``I agree to a ceasefire, Mr. President.''

President Putin said: I will agree to a cease-fire in the Black Sea, but I want conditions. I want conditions.

And do you know what his conditions are?--to have the United States of America remove the sanctions on the Russian economy.

Then, to make matters worse, President Putin said: Oh, by the way, I have one other condition. I want to put the people of Ukraine and the Government of Ukraine under the administration of the United Nations.

In other words, he wants the people of Ukraine to give up their democratic form of government and be run by the United Nations.

Then, finally, President Putin said to President Trump: Oh, yes. There is one other thing, too, before I will agree to a cease-fire in the Black Sea or to a cease-fire generally.

``I don't want to just negotiate with you, President Trump,'' President Putin said.

He said: I want China to be part of the negotiations and India and Brazil and South Africa--and get this; this will curdle your lunch-- North Korea.

Mama Gump said that stupid is as stupid does. President Putin is not interested in peace. President Putin thinks President Trump took the bullet train to Chump Town.

I mean, I can tell you how I look at this and, I think, how most Americans look at this situation. I think to myself: You know, my mama didn't raise a fool, and if she did, it was one of my brothers. I see what Putin is doing. He is not serious here.

I would gently--no. I take that back. I would firmly suggest to President Putin: If you want peace, stop treating President Trump and the American people like a bunch of chumps. Stop it. If you want respect, act respectfully. If you want to be taken seriously, act seriously--because his conduct toward President Trump's hand of peace has been despicable. It would gag a maggot.

(Mr. HUSTED assumed the Chair.)

Tariffs

Now, Mr. President, on a separate subject, I want to talk about Canada.

By the way, my colleague here today, Nick Ayers, is with me. Nick is one of my colleagues in my Senate office, and I thank him for being here today.

I want to talk for a moment about Canada. I want to make it clear: I love

Canada. I have visited Canada several times, many times. It is breathtakingly beautiful, and the people of Canada are just terrific. They are hard-working. They are very pleasant. They are fun-loving once you get to know them.

The United States of America and Canada have been friends and allies for decades. We are neighbors. We share a 5,525-mile border. I am proud of that. We share history. We share values. We maintain longstanding mutual security commitments. We are both members of NATO. Canada and America are members of the binational North American Aerospace Defense Command. You probably know that as NORAD.

It is more than just security commitments, though. It is more than just business. We are friends, and I am proud of that. I remember, on 9/11--who will ever be able to forget 9/11--U.S. airspace was shut down. The people of Canada stepped right up to the plate. They immediately implemented Operation Yellow Ribbon. They opened their airports. The Canadians opened their homes. The Canadians opened their hearts to 33,000 Americans who were stranded.

There is a little town in Newfoundland called Gander. I remember this, too, that Gander has 10,000 people, but they welcomed thousands of American passengers. They fed them. They sheltered them. They comforted our American citizens. They gave them a little bit of peace at a scary time for America and the world. There was no hesitation by the people of Canada. It was only humanity. I will never forget that.

I remember, after Hurricane Katrina, which hit my State, it destroyed Southeast Louisiana--New Orleans, yes, but many other parts of my State as well--and Mississippi. Canada was the very first country and the people of Canada were the very first people to send disaster relief. Their program was called Operation UNISON. Their military ships sailed south to help us in Louisiana. They sent 1,000 people and a lot of supplies. And do you know what? The good people of Canada did the same thing when we had the horrible fires in California.

Here is my point: I don't want to be at war with Canada. I don't want to have a trade war with Canada. I want us to continue to be friends. I made this suggestion to the new Prime Minister of Canada the other day, Prime Minister Carney. I am going to make it again, and I hope, this time, he will take it more seriously. Remember, if you want to be taken seriously, you have to act seriously. If you want respect, you have to act respectfully.

Prime Minister Carney, you say that President Trump is not a fair trader. I understand your point of view. I don't agree with you, but I understand your point of view. You have got to stand up for your people. Prime Minister Carney, if you believe in free trade, then here is what you do. Make this offer today: Offer to go to zero tariffs in Canada on American goods--no tariffs, none, zero, zilch, nada--and challenge America to remove all of our tariffs on Canada so the people of Canada can sell their goods to Americans without a tariff, and the people of America can sell their goods to our friends in Canada without a tariff--zero tariffs. Let Canadian businesses and American businesses compete. Competition makes all of us better. That is one of the shared values that we have with our friends in Canada. Let American businesses and Canadian businesses go at it in a friendly, competitive way and may the best price and the best product win. That is fair trade. That is free trade.

If Prime Minister Carney wants fair trade and free trade, he will make that offer. I don't speak for President Trump, but I will certainly encourage President Trump to accept that offer, and I think he will.

There is a way to stop this trade war. It is just to remove the tariffs on both sides. Remember what Mama Gump said:

Stupid is as stupid does.

Let's don't be stupid. Let's don't have a trade war. Let's continue to be friends. Let's get rid of these tariffs.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.