In short order, Donald Trump has done extraordinary harm to the relationship between the United States and Canada. There are plenty of lawmakers on Capitol Hill — in both parties — who believe the president is on the wrong track, especially when it comes to trade tariffs on our allies north of the border.
With this in mind, Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia has championed a privileged resolution that would terminate the president’s Feb. 1 emergency declaration, which the White House used to issue tariffs on Canada. It would also, of course, eliminate the need for Canada’s retaliatory tariffs on American products.
The question has long been whether Kaine, whose measure was co-authored with Democratic Sens. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Mark Warner of Virginia, could pick up a handful of Republican supporters to clear the upper chamber. That question now has an answer.
The Senate voted 51-48 to pass the resolution, with four Republicans — Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul of Kentucky and Susan Collins of Maine — joining all 47 Democrats in support.
The outcome is striking, though it’s not altogether surprising. Paul, for example, is a longtime tariff critic and co-sponsor of Kaine’s resolution, while Collins and Murkowski signaled their support for the Democratic measure ahead of the floor vote.
Of particular interest, though, was McConnell, who is retiring next year and has become an occasional thorn in the White House’s side, and who’s likely to face another round of hysterical criticisms from the Oval Office.
As a practical matter, the fact that Kaine’s resolution passed won’t have any immediate policy implications: The measure will now head to the GOP-led House, where it will very likely go ignored.
That said, as a Politico report summarized it, losing this vote represents “the most significant rebuke to Trump that congressional Republicans have yet mustered in his second term.”
It’s precisely why Trump recently began lobbying aggressively against Kaine’s resolution, publishing an item to his social media platform that said a Senate vote in support of the measure would be “devastating for the Republican Party.” In a follow-up item, the president wrote that GOP senators should “fight the Democrats wild and flagrant push to not penalize Canada for the sale, into our Country, of large amounts of Fentanyl, by Tariffing the value of this horrible and deadly drug in order to make it more costly to distribute and buy.” The missive suggested that Trump was under the impression that he’s imposing tariffs on fentanyl, which doesn’t make any sense. He went on to write, “Why are they allowing Fentanyl to pour into our Country unchecked, and without penalty. What is wrong with them, other than suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome, commonly known as TDS? Who can want this to happen to our beautiful families, and why?” To the extent that reality still has any relevance in the debate, the idea that fentanyl is “pouring into” the United States is rather silly. In fact, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, only 43 pounds of fentanyl were found crossing the northern border in 2024 — as opposed to 21,100 pounds seized at the southern border. Fighting a trade war with a trusted ally and neighbor over fentanyl that could fit in a single suitcase is absurd. The president might not understand this, but a bipartisan majority of the Senate got it right.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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