Vice President JD Vance traveled to Capitol Hill late Wednesday to cast a tie-breaking vote in the Senate that killed a bipartisan effort to rebuke President Donald Trump’s trade policy.
Earlier in the evening, the Senate rejected the resolution that would have effectively blocked Trump’s global tariffs by revoking the emergency order the president is using to enact them. Two senators who were set to vote for the resolution, Republican Mitch McConnell and Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse, were absent, allowing the resolution to fail 49-49.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune then moved to ensure that tariff opponents were unable to bring their resolution back up at a later date, forcing Vance to the US Capitol to put an end to the matter. It marked just the second time the vice president has used his tie-breaking authority.
In his second term, Trump has placed historic tariffs on a wide variety of imports. He’s put a 10% tariff on virtually everything coming into the United States; imposed 25% tariffs on steel, aluminum, autos and many items from Mexico and Canada; and placed a tariff of at least 145% on most Chinese goods imported to the US in by far the most significant trade action to date.
Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine, who cosponsored the resolution to block the tariffs, argued that Vance having to break the tie worked in the resolution-backers’ favor.
“They are so dead set on this tariff idiocy that is wrecking the economy that they’re going to bring the vice president over to completely own it. Great, let them do it. Let them do it,” he said. “The American public needs to know who to blame for this. And they are showing everybody tonight who is to blame for this.”
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer also hit at Republicans for preventing a future vote, saying that “Thune and the Republicans are working to keep Trump’s tariffs in place.”
GOP Sens. Rand Paul, who cosponsored the resolution, Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski voted along with Democrats in support of the resolution, but they were unable to pull together the needed votes to adopt it with the key absences Wednesday.
McConnell would have voted for it had he not been under the weather.
“The Senator has been consistent in opposing tariffs and that a trade war is not in the best interest of American households and businesses. He believes that tariffs are a tax increase on everybody,” his spokesman said.
Even had there not been key absences and the resolution had been adopted, the resolution was dead on arrival in the House. There, Speaker Mike Johnson earlier this year tucked a provision into a rule to prohibit consideration of the measure until September 30.
The Senate moved earlier this month to symbolically condemn Trump’s tariffs on Canada, and House Republicans used the same procedural tactic to ensure that resolution couldn’t be considered in their chamber.
The president, for his part, has remained defiant in the face of congressional criticism, previously vowing to veto any such resolution if necessary.