In a 52–48 vote, the U.S. Senate moved to overturn President Trump’s sweeping tariffs on Brazilian imports, exposing growing bipartisan resistance to his hardline trade war — though the White House promises to block the measure.
In an extraordinary rebuke to the Trump administration’s protectionist trade agenda, the U.S. Senate voted 52–48 on Tuesday to repeal the emergency declaration underpinning President Donald Trump’s 50% tariffs on Brazilian imports, including coffee, beef, and industrial goods.
The bipartisan measure, spearheaded by Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA), marked one of the few times in Trump’s second term that lawmakers from both parties united to challenge his use of executive economic powers. Five Republicans — Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins, Rand Paul, Thom Tillis, and Mitch McConnell — broke ranks to join Democrats in backing the resolution.
The move came on day 28 of the federal government shutdown, adding a layer of political tension as Congress remains gridlocked over funding and trade policy.
“Tariffs are a tax on American consumers, a tax on American businesses, and a tax imposed by one man — Donald J. Trump,” Kaine said on the Senate floor.
The resolution seeks to terminate Trump’s national emergency declaration on Brazil, which the president invoked in July to justify tariffs following what he called the “political persecution” of his ally, former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro. Bolsonaro was convicted earlier this year of attempting a military coup in 2022 and sentenced to 27 years in prison.
Declaring Bolsonaro’s prosecution an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to U.S. interests, Trump used the emergency to enact punitive 50% import duties — a move critics denounced as legally dubious and economically harmful.
“Not liking someone’s tariffs is not an emergency,” said Senator Rand Paul, the only Republican co-sponsor of the bill. “Emergencies are for war, famine, and natural disasters. This was an abuse of power and a betrayal of Congress’s constitutional role in taxation.”
Even Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, long a Trump ally, warned that trade wars “make both building and buying in America more expensive,” adding, “The economic harms of tariffs are not the exception to history — they are the rule.”
Despite the Senate vote, the legislation faces long odds in the Republican-controlled House, where leadership has pre-emptively moved to block any effort to curb the president’s tariff authority. Even if it passed, Trump has vowed to veto the measure immediately, calling his Brazil tariffs “necessary to protect American farmers and fight global unfair trade.”
At a White House briefing, officials defended the policy as “a major success for U.S. manufacturing and job growth.” Vice President JD Vance attended the Senate GOP lunch on Tuesday to rally support, emphasizing that Trump’s trade measures had “strengthened America’s negotiating hand globally.”
Democrats, however, accuse the administration of weaponizing trade to reward political allies and punish critics. Kaine pointed out that the U.S. actually ran a $7 billion trade surplus with Brazil last year, arguing there was “no justification for invoking an emergency.”
“If this prosecution in Brazil is a national emergency for the United States,” Kaine said, “then any president could declare anything a national emergency.”
The vote lays bare a growing divide in Washington — not just between parties, but within the Republican ranks — as some lawmakers quietly question whether Trump’s populist economic nationalism is beginning to undermine U.S. credibility abroad and strain consumers at home.
