Republican senators willing to go only so far in challenging Trump
This week will tell whether President Donald Trump’s confrontational approach to Canada and other countries over trade at -- and after -the Group of Seven summit made any difference to Senate Republicans weighing whether to back legislation curtailing some of his authority. Early indications are, not much. Sens. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., and Patrick J. Toomey, R-Pa., are pressing ahead with their bill to require congressional approval when the president wants to levy “Section 232” tariffs -- that, is tariffs filed with a national security justification -- like those recently imposed on steel and aluminum imports from Mexico, the European Union and Canada. Corker and Toomey want to add the legislation as an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act, the wide-ranging annual defense policy bill that is currently on the Senate floor.
Corker says developments over the weekend at the G-7 should have increased his colleagues’ interest in supporting his and Toomey’s legislation. That is, after some friendly encounters at the summit of international leaders in Quebec, Trump announced over Twitter as he departed that the United States would not be signing on to the carefully crafted communique with other nations because of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s comments at a news conference criticizing the tariffs on Canada as “kind of insulting.”
“Very dishonest & weak. Our Tariffs are in response to his of 270% on dairy!” Trump fumed over Twitter -simultaneously insulting Trudeau and giving the lie to the national security basis for the 232 tariffs in the first place.
Trump advisers went on the Sunday shows and tripled down on Trump’s comments, as my colleague Damian Paletta put it, with trade adviser Peter Navarro going so far as to say that there’s “a special place in hell” for Trudeau.
“There’s a special place in hell for any foreign leader that engages in bad-faith diplomacy with President Donald J. Trump and then tries to stab him in the back on the way out the door,” Navarro told Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday. “And that’s what bad-faith Justin Trudeau did with that stunt press conference.”
Navarro’s comments did not go over well with Senate Republicans. Orrin Hatch, Utah, told me and Seung Min Kim for our story published Monday night that Navarro “should’ve kept his big mouth shut,” while John Cornyn, Texas, the No. 2 Senate Republican, said that “if Mr. Navarro worked for me, I’d probably give him a stern talking-to.”
Corker’s view: “I would think that more people would be inclined to want to support a piece of legislation that allows us to weigh in on any final product. That would be, I think the natural impulse of people who saw what happened,” said the Foreign Relations Committee chairman.
There was little evidence as senators returned to the Capitol Monday evening that any minds had been changed among undecided senators. Hatch did say the legislation appealed to him. But Sen. Deb Fischer, R-Neb., said, “I haven’t heard a compelling case. The sponsors of the bill need to make that.”