The Senate on Tuesday voted to terminate the 50 percent tariffs that President Trump has imposed on Brazil, with a handful of Republicans crossing party lines to help push through a measure rejecting the emergency declaration used to justify them.
While the resolution faces long odds in the House, where Republicans have taken extraordinary steps to make it more difficult to bring up such measures, the vote signaled bipartisan frustration with the president’s tariffs on most goods from Brazil, a country with which the United States has a multibillion-dollar trade surplus.
The resolution is one of three that Democrats have planned to bring up for a vote this week to challenge Mr. Trump’s moves to circumvent Congress and wage a trade war that many lawmakers are concerned will harm their constituents. Votes are expected in the next few days on tariffs the president imposed on Canada and a global tariff rate on more than 100 trading partners.
The vote on Tuesday was 52 to 48 to end the levies on Brazil, with five Republicans joining Democrats to pass the resolution.
Senator Tim Kaine, Democrat of Virginia and the lead sponsor of the measures, said the votes are as much about the president’s overreach of power as they are about the economic impact of his sweeping tariffs.
“Are we just going to allow the trade power which is handed to Congress, or the war power which is handed to Congress, or the appropriations power which is handed to Congress, or the nominations advice and consent power which is handed to the Senate — are we just going to allow those powers to be taken over by this president or any president?” Mr. Kaine said.
The resolution that advanced Tuesday and the two additional measures expected later this week would terminate emergency declarations that Mr. Trump made, relying on a Cold War-era law, to justify his tariffs, and in doing so, eliminate his power to enforce them.
“Emergencies are like war, famine, tornado,” said Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, the sole Republican sponsor of the resolution rejecting the tariffs on Brazil in Mr. Trump’s trade war. “Not liking someone’s tariffs is not an emergency. It’s an abuse of the emergency power, and it’s Congress abdicating their traditional role in taxes.”
Joining Mr. Paul in supporting the measure were four other G.O.P. senators who have expressed concern that the tariffs could cause economic pain in the United States: Senators Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina.
“Tariffs make both building and buying in America more expensive. The economic harms of trade wars are not the exception to history, but the rule,” Mr. McConnell said in a statement. The former Republican leader said he planned to vote for additional resolutions to curb Mr. Trump’s tariffs expected to be voted on in the coming days.
Mr. Tillis indicated on Tuesday before the vote that he probably would only support the measure on the tariffs on Brazil.
“I’ve had a big concern with the Brazil one in particular, since we have a trade surplus with them. That’s the only one I’m considering,” Mr. Tillis said. He opposed a similar attempt to rescind tariffs on Canada in April.
Asked before the vote why more of his Republican colleagues were not willing to support the measure, Mr. Paul answered: “Fear.”
Past presidents have used the International Economic Emergency Powers Act to punish human rights violators and rogue states. But in the case of Brazil, the tariffs are primarily based on politics. Mr. Trump strongly opposes the Brazilian government’s prosecution of Jair Bolsonaro, his ally who is accused of plotting a coup after he lost the last presidential election.
“The prosecution of a friend of the president — how is that an emergency that threatens the United States? It doesn’t,” Mr. Kaine said.
Several Republicans who opposed the resolution said the effort to rein in the president’s tariffs amounted to nothing but showmanship on the Senate floor.
Senator Mike Rounds, Republican of South Dakota, said the bill was “more of a political design than it is a substantive approach.”
Senator John Hoeven, Republican of North Dakota, said he would vote against all three tariff resolutions this week because he supports the president’s attempt to “level the playing field for our exporters.”
“And in the short term, of course, there’s bumps and it’s difficult, but the idea is to ultimately get better trade terms,” Mr. Hoeven said.
But even Republicans who voted against the resolution showed signs of concern over the impact of the tariffs on their states.
Soybean exporters have been hit hard by the Trump administration’s retaliatory tariffs on China. Senator Kevin Cramer, Republican of North Dakota, said that if Mr. Trump in his meeting this week with the Chinese leader Xi Jinping “can actually pull off a big trade deal with China that involves the sale of soybeans, all will be forgiven.”
Robert Jimison and Carl Hulse contributed reporting.
Megan Mineiro is a Times congressional reporter and a member of the 2025-26 Times Fellowship class, a program for early-career journalists.
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