While markets around the world have collapsed and other countries have plotted reprisals in response to the radical prices of President Donald Trump, the republican senator Chuck Grassley and Democrat Maria Cantwell presented Bipartite legislation on Thursday that would force the congress to approve new prices.
And the Democrats of the House are preparing to try to force a vote to end the prices.
The reaction to the prices and their benefits was predictable on the party lines on Capitol Hill, although some Republicans said they were concerned about the reaction of the markets.
The Senate bill would force the president to inform the congress of new prices within 48 hours and that the congress act to approve these prices within 60 days.
Senator Chuck Schumer in the Senate in the Capitol, April 3, 2025.
US Senate
We do not know if the bill would have the support it needs to adopt. But it comes less than a day after four Republicans voted with democrats to adopt a resolution that would block Trump’s prices on Canadian products.
Cantwell said hers and Grassley’s bill intervenes at a time when the congress should “reaffirm itself in our constitutional duties”. She said that she had been modeled after the resolution of the war powers of 1973 and “would restore the limits of the president’s authority”, in particular with regard to the taxation of prices without the approval of the congress.
“The congress in the law on the powers of the war decided to recover its authority because they thought that a president had exceeded,” said Cantwell.
Cantwell and Grassley are part of the Senate financing committee. Grassley, a former president, has long pleaded to restore the role of the congress in commercial policy.
In the House, the national emergency law that Trump used to impose new prices allows the Congress to vote on a disapproval resolution which would effectively cancel them. The congress will have to vote within 15 days after Trump informed the congress of the new declaration, ABC News told ABC News told ABC News.
While the Republicans could adopt a new measure to prevent Congress from preventing Trump policies, Democrats think that Republicans would pay a higher political price.
“Any change in rules will be a vote supporting the president’s rates,” a senior democratic assistant said ABC News.
The head of the Senate minority, Chuck Schumer, described the prices one of the “most stupid” decisions taken by Trump as president “, and that said something”.
“Donald Trump alone created a financial forest fire,” said Schumer on the Senate soil.
Schumer called President Mike Johnson to recall the house in session to take a resolution adopted by the Senate which would block prices on Canadian products. Republicans Susan Collins, Mitch McConnell, Lisa Murkowski and Rand Paul voted on Wednesday with the Democrats to adopt the bill that Paul co-wrote with the Democrat Tim Kaine.
McConnell said Thursday that “commercial wars with our partners are most harm the workers”.
Senator Maria Cantwell speaks at the Capitol on April 3, 2025.
US Senate
When he was asked if Trump had taken the right step, the Republican Senator Mike Rounds of the South Dakota said: “We will know.”
“The only thing we know is that the president was very clear that he thinks that there should be fair trade agreements with our partners, our friends and our allies,” said Rounds. “This is his first step. Let’s discover how they react.”
Northern Dakota Gop Senator Kevin Cramer said he was comfortable with the place where his voters stood on Trump’s prices.
“My own voters voted for this,” he said. “It is not as if Donald Trump was surprising anyone – he reported his strong support for the prices from the start, he exercised it in the past, and with that, he obtained 66% of the votes in the Dakota of the North, so with this promise, they trusted him. So, yes, I am comfortable with where my constituents are on.”
And although he said that the markets reacted, Kramer said that the longer trends would be more revealing.
“Well, you know that the market is emotional – it has always been,” said Kramer. “I never look at a market day and I see a trend, so you know, we will see, but I hope that, as I said, that it finds a background and that it then starts to find a ceiling much later.”
Democratic Senator Chris Coons of Rhode Island described the prices of “crazy” and said that deployment was “another thing that is incoherent, misxeded and would have important consequences”.
Kaine said that some Republicans who voted against his resolution told him on Wednesday that he was not wrong, but they were going to give Trump the benefit of the doubt.
When asked if he thought they could raise their voice as things happened, he said, “I do it, because I think they will hear their stronger and stronger voters.” They will see that it will not work, and when it does not work, I cannot imagine that they will stay, you know, the president transforms our economy into a recession. “”
-Abc News’ Mariam Khan and Rachel Scott contributed to this report.
