Trump’s new trade agenda is on a collision course with midterms

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. President Trump’s new plan for tariffs puts his trade agenda on a collision course with the midterm campaign season. Just hours after his main tariff rationale was invalidated by the Supreme Court on Friday, Trump announced he would implement new levies under two separate legal authorities—one short term, another longer lasting.

Some of the new tariffs Trump wants to impose require congressional approval to extend beyond five months. Others require months of investigations before they can be put into place. In both cases, that pushes key tariff decisions into the summer, just months before November’s midterms when many Republicans are likely to be especially sensitive to complaints about inflation and affordability.

In a sign of growing anxiety toward his tariffs, six GOP lawmakers voted with Democrats last week in an attempt to rein in Trump’s tariff powers in the House of Representatives. The Senate passed three similar resolutions last year on narrow bipartisan votes. Now, Republicans running for re-election will have to grapple with tariff drama along with other attacks from Democrats on the economy.

“The potential that they could be asked by the White House to vote to levy higher tariffs on their constituents is not something Congress would look forward to," said former Rep. Kevin Brady, a Republican from Texas, who led the Ways and Means Committee during Trump’s first term. “The conventional wisdom is that there isn’t support for that." On Friday, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.), who has defended the president’s tariffs, said Congress and the administration “will determine the best path forward in the coming weeks." The Supreme Court ruling also left many questions about