July 30,2025

Wyden Urges Colleagues to Rein in Trump's Catastrophic Trade War

As Prepared for Delivery

Watch a video of Wyden deliver his remarks here

I rise to support my colleagues who are seeking to free Americans from crushing new trade taxes, courtesy of Donald Trump’s tariffs.

Trump has slapped tariffs on things Americans buy from scores of countries. He’s already hit cars and car parts, aluminum, beer, food, and clothing. All of those tariffs mean that Americans will pay more to buy the things they need, because Trump’s taxes are jacking up the price.

This month Donald Trump has been announcing so-called trade deals with a handful of countries. These deals aren’t what they’re cracked up to be. The USMCA - negotiated by Trump - was a trade deal. It was the result of intense negotiations, a transparent process, and a bipartisan vote in Congress. It produced real wins for the American people, such as Oregon potato growers who were able to ship U.S. potatoes into Mexico for the first time in decades.

Trump’s latest deals mostly consist of a tariff number — 20 percent on products from Vietnam, for example — with vague promises that the rest will be figured out later. Instead of having an enforceable, binding agreement that opens markets to U.S. farmers and manufacturers and small businesses now, our country is essentially getting a few lines scratched on a napkin.

Not surprisingly, when Trump describes these deals, his story is often different from what other countries say they agreed to. For example, Japan says it will provide up to $550 billion of financing in the United States. Ok, fine. But Trump claims Japan promised to create a $550 billion fund that “will be spent at President Trump’s direction” — essentially a personal slush fund. Meanwhile, Vietnam has not even confirmed that it has agreed to the deal that Trump announced.

What does our country get in exchange for these higher tariffs, paid by Americans? Prolonged economic pain.

U.S. workers and employers are already getting battered by Trump's trade chaos. The Big Three U.S. automakers all announced plunging profits. General Motors lost $1.1 billion due to tariffs. Instead of making U.S. automakers better off, his new tariff scheme will actually make U.S. cars and trucks more expensive compared to Japanese competitors, according to carmarkers.

It’s only to get worse. Because of Trump’s endless flip-flops on tariffs, the real costs of his trade taxes are only fully going into effect in coming months.

Donald Trump can do all this because he went rogue and is claiming emergency powers to pursue his tariffs.

My colleagues and I are proposing straightforward legislation to clarify that the President’s emergency powers can’t be used to put tariffs on the things Americans buy from other countries. A number of our Republican colleagues have supported Senator Shaheen’s proposal in the past. Putting a check on the president’s power to land us in trade wars didn’t used to be a partisan effort.

Senator Welch, Senator Markey, other colleagues, and I also want to exempt small businesses from having to pay Trump’s emergency tariffs, because small businesses are the least able to absorb big new government taxes on the materials they need to make their goods.

The bill my colleague Senator Shaheen and I are trying to pass today would rein in some of Trump’s worst impulses and clarify that the laws on the books were never meant to be a blank check for the President to abuse tariffs by using them as a punishment against any country that hurts his feelings.

At the same time, my home state of Oregon is fighting these tariffs in court, with arguments that will happen tomorrow.

Trump and his billionaire friends won’t feel the impact of higher tariffs, and they don’t care about the millions of Americans who will. Congress and the courts must make clear that the tariff rollercoaster needs to stop.

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