Congresswoman Madeleine Dean of Glenside responded today to the 90-day pause on the Trump administration’s “reciprocal tariffs” plan.
Earlier this month, the Trump administration announced that the United States will implement a 25% tariff on all imported canned beer and empty aluminum cans, as well as a 34% tax on imports from China and 20% on the European Union, among others.
Some of those tariffs rose to above 50% on the goods from some countries deemed to have been “ripping off” the US in their trade practices, according to The Guardian.
“Everybody wants to come and make a deal, and we’re working with a lot of different countries, and it’s all going to work out very well,” Mr. Trump said during a cabinet meeting. “I think it’s going to work out really, very well, but we’re in good shape.”
On Wednesday, Trump implemented a 90-day pause to taxes on imports, according to BBC.com. The new minimum 10% tariff rate, which came into effect on Saturday, is still in place for goods coming from all countries, including the UK.
“This was his strategy all along. President Trump created maximum negotiating leverage for himself,” said Scott Bessent, the US treasury secretary, according to the New York Times.
“Many of you in the media clearly missed The Art of the Deal. You clearly failed to see what President Trump is doing here,” explained the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt.
Dean previously criticized the plan—dubbed “Liberation Day”—via a statement. Her message today centered around “the damage to our markets, to everyday Americans’ retirement savings” and called the President’s actions “self-inflicted chaos”.
From her statement:
Now, the President has retreated from his punishing and fickle tariffs with a 90-day pause for all trading partners but China — while we remain at the will of Trump’s erratic game of chicken with our closest allies.
This is not a coherent economic policy. This is self-inflicted chaos.
Businesses and Americans need certainty. And yet in the first 11 weeks of this Administration, our country has lost more than $11 trillion.
Article I of the Constitution grants Congress the ‘power to lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises…’ and also ‘to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations… .’
Speaker Johnson and my Republican colleagues — including those from Pennsylvania — must immediately bring a measure to the floor to take back Congress’s authority on tariffs.
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