Four Republicans join the Democrats in the US Senate To adopt a resolution on Wednesday which seeks to end the emergency justification of the fentanyl used by President Donald Trump to impose price In Canada, breaking with their party to protest against the growing trade war with the ally closest to America.
Sense. Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul of Kentucky, Senator Lisa Murkowski from Alaska and Sénatrice Susan Collins of Maine joined the 45 Democratic and Independent Senators to support the resolution, which adopted 51-48 but will probably remain symbolic.
The vote came shortly after Trump announced his alleged “reciprocal” price plan This aims to redirect world trade, an action that the American president called “Liberation Day”.
The new policy did not include Canada, but held in place of 25% prices on Canadian products as well as exemptions that would expire on Wednesday. Trump had used emergency powers to justify the prices in response to what he claims to be a failure to stop the fentanyl flow in the United States
However, senators who voted for the measure have pointed out that Canada is not the main source of fentanyl in the United States and that Canadian products will cause higher prices and economic costs for Americans.
“No one in this room … would dispute that fentanyl is a massive problem, and in fact an emergency,” said Democratic Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia on Wednesday, who presented the resolution in the Senate before the vote.
“But … calling a Canadian emergency and putting the same rates on Canadian products that we put on Mexican (products) is an invented emergency, not a real emergency.”
The annual threat evaluation report of the United States community, Released last week, Does not mention Canada in its section on illicit drugs and fentanyl – an omission that Kaine has underlined several times.
A small fraction of the fentanyl that enters the United States between Canada. Customs and the protection of American borders seized Just under 20 kilograms of fentanyl on the northern border during the year 2024, and the authorities have entered around half a Kilogram since January, according to federal data.
Meanwhile, on the southern border, the authorities seized more than 9,500 kilograms last year.
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Kaine said that a more in-depth study of statistics suggests that last year’s convulsions could also be an over-counting, and included fentanyl met in Northern American communities like Spokane, Washington, has not crossed the Canada border, but rather from Mexico.
Kaine’s resolution aims to end the use by Trump of international law on economic emergency powers, also called IEPA, to declare an emergency on fentanyl trafficking in order to hit Canada with prices.
Most fentanyl and its precursors come from China and Mexico, which, according to Kaine, is why he did not seek to end Trump’s prices on Mexican goods who were also imposed in the declaration of emergency.
Since Trump threatened these prices for the first time in November, Canada has made new investments in border security and information and has appointed a fentanyl tsar to supervise its various strategies to combat deadly opioid.
Last week, Trump said that Canada and Mexico had “intensified” and said on Tuesday: “we are progressing” in the fight against fentanyl in an article on social networks urging Republicans to vote against Kaine’s measure.
Just before 1 am, Eastern time, Trump called McConnell, Paul, Murkowski and Collins by name and urged them to “get on the republican train, for a change”.
He said Democrats were looking for “not penalizing Canada for the sale, in our country, of large quantities of fentanyl, by price the value of this horrible and fatal drug in order to make it more expensive to distribute and buy”.
It was not clear what the president meant when he said he would impose prices for fentanyl from Canada. The tampered fentanyl is not sold legally when it crosses a border, which means that there is no mechanism such as a border guard applying import rights or costs under legal processes for imports, that is to say how the prices are applied and collected.
Republicans have repercussions against commercial protectionism, economic impacts
Kaine and other Democrats have argued that the prices in Canada would undertake in the economy, which makes the construction of military houses and ships more expensive and buy grocery products.
This argument was taken up by the Republicans who supported the measure.
“Canada prices would be detrimental to many Maine families and our local savings,” Collins said on Wednesday.
Paul, who has long supported free trade, warned Trump’s prices would cause specific damage to the North American automotive sector, which is also faced with separate rights that should start on Thursday imports from foreign vehicles.
“Do you like the idea of prices, is it such a good word, to pay $ 10,000 more for a car?” He asked.
He noted that until recently, the Republicans have historically shared his opposition to the prices and should not support policies that will harm several other sectors where Canada is a leading trading partner.
“The ancients and the curators who try to sell prices like anything, but a tax cannot deceive the American people, who know that their purchasing power will be weakened with each new protectionist measure unilaterally imposed by the White House,” he said.
Supporters of the measure also said that they defended the equal powers of the government to set prices and other taxes, and that Trump’s emergency measures replaced the authority of the legislators.
On the other hand, Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming, a high-level Republican in the Senate, praised Trump’s prices to force Canada to take border security measures and said that the United States was facing “unique threats” from the North border.
Customs data and American border protection show that monthly meetings on the Canadian American border fell below 500 in February, the lowest number since September 2022.
Other Republican senators have talked about the urgent need to stop the scourge of fentanyl, which has become the main cause of overdose death in the United States with Tens of thousands of Americans have killed each year. However, some, however, pleaded prices on Canada as a tool to force the country to help this effort.
They accused the Democrats of wanting to end the Fentanyl emergency declaration, which according to them, would weaken the efforts of the administration and the police to end the opioid crisis.
The new rules adopted by the House last month make it unlikely that the Senate measurement will be taken by the Chamber and sent to Trump, who said on Wednesday that he would also reject it.
He said on social networks that the resolution “is not going anywhere because the house will never approve of it and I, as president, I will never sign it.”
– with Canadian press files