Republican Don Bacon warns Trump: No tariff codification bailout coming from Congress
EXCLUSIVE – Rep.
Don Bacon (R-NE) won't support a push by Republican colleagues to codify President
Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs into law, signaling a bailout is not coming from Congress after the Supreme Court
overturned them on Friday.
“Oh, I don't think they have the votes,” Bacon told the Washington Examiner, minutes after the court ruled 6-3 that Trump overstepped his executive authority.
The decision was met with calls from Trump allies on Capitol Hill to use reconciliation, a budget process that skirts the Senate filibuster, to pass the tariffs. But getting a bill with that language through the House, where Republicans have just a one-seat majority, is all but doomed to fail.
Bacon, a centrist who is retiring at the end of the year, is one of just six House Republicans who
voted to repeal Trump’s tariffs on Canada earlier this month, and he believes the well of opposition is much deeper than that vote suggested.
“I can see doing, you know, some targeted tariffs on countries that aren’t treating us right, but that's not what the president was doing,” Bacon said.
He said that he previously urged the White House's legislative affairs team to bring tariffs on Russia and China to Congress, but does not expect Trump to pursue that approach. The current scope of tariffs applies to virtually every U.S. trading partner.
“Why don't you work with us and draft legislation with us, and we'll pass it,” Bacon said of those conversations. “But that would be an admission that they need us on tariffs, so they don't like that.”
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