The US Senate on Wednesday passed a bill aimed at terminating new tariffs on Canada, a few hours after President Donald Trump unveiled a raft of duties on foreign goods against countries spanning the globe.
The Senate voted 51-48 to approve the legislation and send it to the House of Representatives, where it is likely to be shelved.
Four Senate Republicans, in a blow to Trump, teamed up with Democrats to advance the bill.
The Democratic-sponsored bill would terminate a national emergency Trump declared on January 22, which he linked to illegal imports of the deadly fentanyl drug from Mexico, Canada and China and used to target Canada with steep new tariffs.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, a Republican, had urged defeat of the bill, arguing that shifting attention away from Canada would be a step backward.
“Will the cartels simply shift tactics and expand their operations to the north? I think we can be confident the answer to that question is yes,” he said.
The measure needed at least four Republican votes to pass in the chamber where Trump’s party holds a 53-47 majority.
In a social media post over the night, he urged four fellow Republicans by name to reject the bill: Senators Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul.
Collins, in a speech to the Senate before the vote, said that Trump’s proposed Canadian tariffs would hurt several industries in her home state of Maine, including its paper makers, which obtain pulp via a pipeline from Canada.
As the debate wore on, Paul also attacked new, steep tariffs on Canada in a Senate speech.
Democratic Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia, the leading sponsor of the tariff-ending bill, noted during debate that the US-Mexico-Canada trade deal negotiated during Trump’s first term as president has dispute-resolution mechanisms that would make imposition of tariffs unnecessary.
