The Senate on Wednesday approved a measure that would block some of the tariffs President Trump has imposed on Canada, with a handful of Republicans joining Democrats to pass a resolution that would halt levies set to take effect this week.
The measure is all but certain to stall in the House, where G.O.P. leaders have moved preemptively to shut down any move to end Mr. Trump’s tariffs. But Senate passage of the measure on a vote of 51 to 48 — just hours after Mr. Trump unveiled sweeping tariffs on more than 100 trading partners, including the European Union, China, Britain and India — sent a signal of bipartisan congressional opposition to the president’s trade war.
The resolution targets the emergency powers Mr. Trump invoked in February to impose sweeping tariffs on Canada, a move that has rattled markets and drawn bipartisan criticism from lawmakers concerned about the economic impact on their states and districts.
Mr. Trump imposed the tariffs in an executive order that cited the International Economic Emergency Powers Act, a Cold War-era law that has most often been used to impose sanctions on rogue states and human rights violators. His administration argued that unchecked drug trafficking from Canada constituted a dire threat to American national security and used it as justification to unilaterally impose 25 percent tariffs on America’s closest trading partner.
“The president has justified the imposition of these tariffs on, in my view, a made-up emergency,” said Senator Tim Kaine, Democrat of Virginia and the lead sponsor of the resolution. “The fentanyl emergency is from Mexico and China. It’s not from Canada.”
The resolution, cosponsored by two fellow Democrats, Senators Mark Warner of Virginia and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, seeks to revoke the emergency declaration and, with it, Mr. Trump’s ability to enforce the tariffs set to go into effect on Wednesday.
Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky was the lone Republican sponsor of the resolution. But three other G.O.P. senators who have expressed unease about the potential economic consequences of Mr. Trump’s trade measures joined him in support: Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.
“Tariffs are a terrible mistake,” Mr. Paul said ahead of the vote. “They don’t work. They will lead to higher prices.” He added that he believed they were a tax and “have historically been bad for our economy.” Mr. Paul also argued that the emergency powers Mr. Trump used to justify the tariffs was an inappropriate circumventing of powers granted to Congress, not the president.
Ahead of the vote, Ms. Collins said she supported Mr. Trump’s efforts to “halt this dangerous and deadly flow” of fentanyl into the United States, but said the tariffs would be “detrimental.” She also added that most fentanyl was coming from Mexico and China, not Canada.
Last year, about 19 kilograms of fentanyl was intercepted at the Canada-U. S. border; almost 9,600 kilograms was intercepted at the border with Mexico according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota and the majority leader, argued that eliminating the tariffs on Canada would be a mistake and amount to turning a blind eye to what he said was a growing fentanyl problem from America’s northern neighbor.
“We would be wrong to view this as solely a southern border problem: The reality is that fentanyl production is growing in Canada,” Mr. Thune said, arguing against the resolution before the vote. “Ending this emergency declaration would tell the cartels that they should shift their focus.”
Mr. Trump lobbied Republicans intensely to oppose the effort. In a series of social media posts on Tuesday, he attacked G.O.P. backers of the resolution and tried to convince them to reconsider, warning others against from breaking ranks and defying his executive order.
In one post, he named the four Republican defectors and said they were “playing with the lives of the American people, and right into the hands of the Radical Left Democrats and Drug Cartels.”
But his efforts were not enough to dissuade them.
“I share the president’s goal of getting more of that manufacturing done in the state of Maine, done in United States,” Ms. Collins said ahead of Wednesday’s vote. “But the fact is that if we impose these tariffs on Canadian processing it’s going to be our Maine lobstermen who will bear the cost. It’s going to be consumers who bear the costs.”
The resolution now moves to the House, where Republican leaders have more control over its fate. House leaders moved quietly last month to cede their chamber’s power to force a vote on ending the tariffs on Canada, China and Mexico, meaning that unless Republicans in control of the chamber opt to bring up such a measure, it will never reach the floor.
But Democrats in the House were seeking alternative ways to nullify Mr. Trump’s tariffs strategy. Representative Gregory W. Meeks, Democrat of New York, said that he would move to force a vote on the new package of tariffs Mr. Trump announced Wednesday afternoon.
“I’ll soon introduce a privileged resolution to force a vote on ending the made-up national emergency Trump is using to justify these taxes,” Mr. Meeks said in a statement. “Republicans can’t keep ducking this.”
