The House is set on Wednesday to consider a Democratic-written measure that would rescind tariffs President Trump imposed on Canada last year, taking a largely symbolic but politically consequential vote that Republicans have fought for a year to prevent.
The measure, sponsored by Representative Gregory W. Meeks of New York, the top Democrat on the Foreign Affairs Committee, offers the House its first opportunity to formally register support or opposition to Mr. Trump’s trade policy since he began deploying tariffs as an economic strategy upon his return to the White House.
It is unlikely to have any practical effect given that Mr. Trump almost certainly would veto it, but the measure’s movement through the House reflects frustration among some G.O.P. lawmakers about Congress continuing to cede its authority over trade matters to the White House, and concern that voters are being hurt by the levies.
And it will force Republicans who are staring down difficult midterm re-election races to go on the record either backing tariffs that some of their constituents oppose or angering the president.
It comes after House Republican leaders, who have blocked such a vote for months using procedural tricks, failed this week to muster the support in their own ranks to push it off once more. Three Republicans crossed party lines on Tuesday night to defeat that effort and clear the way for tariff challenges to be considered.
“President Trump brags about the money generated from tariffs, but it is money ripped right out of the wallets of working families,” Mr. Meeks said in urging colleagues to support his measure.
Last February, Mr. Trump invoked the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to declare a national security emergency and impose tariffs of 25 percent on all imports from Canada and Mexico, as well as 10 percent on products from China. He cited border security failures tied to drug trafficking and illegal migration.
Wednesday’s measure in the House is aimed at ending the emergency declaration used to justify the Canadian tariffs, though Democrats have queued up additional challenges aimed at the global tariffs issued in April as well as those on Mexico, China and Brazil.
A similar set of resolutions passed the Senate last October, when three Republicans joined all Democrats in backing legislation challenging the president’s emergency-based tariff authority.
But while a handful of Republicans have joined Democrats’ challenges to Mr. Trump’s approach, the defections fall far short of the two-thirds majority needed in both chambers to override a veto.
It is not clear how the Republican defectors who allowed the vote to go forward — Representatives Don Bacon of Nebraska, Kevin Kiley of California and Thomas Massie of Kentucky — will ultimately vote.
Even after his own members dealt him a stinging defeat on the House floor on the matter on Tuesday night, Speaker Mike Johnson, Republican of Louisiana, argued that Congress had no business intervening in Mr. Trump’s trade policy.
“The tariffs have been a tool that the president has used very effectively to level the playing field and put America back on top, and I think it’s wrong for Congress to step in the middle of that,” Mr. Johnson said Wednesday morning in an interview on Fox Business.
He also noted that the question of the president’s power is the subject of a case before the Supreme Court, which heard oral arguments in November on the legality of Mr. Trump’s tariffs. Six companies and several states have argued that the president exceeded his authority by using the emergency statute to impose them on nearly every U.S. trading partner.
During oral arguments, key members of the court’s conservative majority joined liberal justices in sharply questioning the administration’s assertion that it has the power to unilaterally impose tariffs without congressional approval. Several justices also noted that Mr. Trump was the first president to claim that the decades-old emergency statute authorized tariffs.
Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, a conservative, expressed concern during that a decision upholding the president’s tariffs could lead to a “one-way ratchet” toward more power in the executive branch and “away from the people’s elected representatives” in Congress. He emphasized the importance of the power to tax, telling the president’s lawyer, “the power to reach into the pockets of the American people is just different.”
Ann E. Marimow contributed reporting from Washington.
Robert Jimison covers Congress for The Times, with a focus on defense issues and foreign policy.
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