Moderate House Republicans worried about this year’s midterm elections appear ready to finally break with President Donald Trump over his signature economic policy.
In a bid to protect Trump, House Speaker Mike Johnson has repeatedly introduced procedural rules banning members from bringing up resolutions challenging the president’s crushing tariffs on products from dozens of U.S. trading partners.
On Tuesday, Johnson planned to ask the House to extend the ban through August. But this time, key Republicans signaled they would likely vote against the measure, Punchbowl reported.
“American consumers pay the tariffs and thus it is a big tax,” Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska told the outlet. “I support giving these authorities back to Congress.”
Rep. Kevin Kiley of California also told Punchbowl that he had “made it clear” he was not in favor of extending the blockade.
With full attendance, two Republican defectors would be enough to sink Johnson’s proposed extension, opening the door to a flood of Democratic resolutions challenging the increasingly unpopular tariffs.
The vote is likely to be close, as some Republicans are still holding out hope the Supreme Court will strike down the tariffs, easing voters’ concerns while sparing them a confrontation with the president, according to Punchbowl.
The duties are a form of import tax paid by American companies, which must either eat the additional costs or pass them along to consumers.
Trump has repeatedly claimed the bulk of the costs fall on foreign producers and middlemen, when in fact Americans “pay one way or the other—via higher prices or less choice,” the opinion editors of the Rupert Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal wrote last week.
Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro acknowledged in December that U.S. manufacturing was down thanks to the tariffs, which have also contributed to higher prices and led to intense trade volatility.
Tariffs were also at the center of an international scandal last month after the president threatened to impose duties on products from countries that opposed his efforts to seize Greenland, an autonomous region of a fellow NATO country, Denmark.
He ultimately dropped the threat after NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte talked him down during a meeting at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
If Johnson’s procedural vote fails, Democrats are likely to force votes as early as this week on resolutions to overturn Trump’s tariffs on products from Mexico and Canada, followed by resolutions aimed at tariffs on Brazilian products and products from other global trade partners.
The Canada vote in particular would be a difficult one for Republicans and would require the White House’s intervention, Johnson told Puck.
While Trump could ultimately veto any resolution reining in his trade wars, a rebuke from Congress would nevertheless be politically damaging.
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment.
