On Senate Floor, Warren Calls on Republicans to Help Put an End to Donald Trump's Tariff Chaos; Calls for Independent Investigation into Market Manipulation
Washington, DC – Right now, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Ranking Member of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, is delivering a speech on the Senate floor calling on Republicans in Congress to help put an end to President Donald Trump’s tariff chaos.
Below are Ranking Member Warren’s remarks as prepared for delivery:
Donald Trump is taking a sledgehammer to our economy.
First Donald Trump imposed across the board tariffs. Then, just a few hours ago, he dropped those tariffs to 10% on everyone and moved it up to 125% on China – up from 105% yesterday. And now? There’s confusion, there’s chaos, and no one knows what these tariffs will be tomorrow.
But here’s what we do know:
Are prices still going up? Yes.
Are businesses still wary to invest? Yes.
Are millions of working people still worried about their jobs and small businesses worried about closing shop? Yes.
And right before Donald Trump declared that some of his tariffs were “off” again – he sent out a message for his billionaire buddies. He posted “this is a great time to buy” in all caps. Was that market manipulation? Was it corruption in plain sight? We need an independent investigation into market manipulation. Because Americans deserve to know whether President Trump or anyone in his Administration manipulated the market to benefit their donors – all while working people and small businesses paid the price.
It’s a disaster.
But here’s the thing: Republicans in Congress have a chance to stop him right now. If they do nothing, they—along with Trump—are responsible for the fallout.
Congress could end this dangerous trade war right now by passing my bipartisan resolution with Senator Ron Wyden to turn off the fake emergency authority Donald Trump is using to impose his worldwide and chaotic tariffs. So I have a simple question for the Senate – why aren’t we passing that resolution, this instant?
Let’s take a step back and talk about what’s happened since Trump imposed his illegal, across-the-board tariffs one week ago today:
Americans’ retirement accounts took a hit.
Businesses have started hiking prices already and many are preparing for layoffs.
Consumer confidence hit its lowest point in years, as millions of Americans wonder if they will have a job in three months’ time.
Economists have said that if we continue down this path of uncertainty, a recession is inevitable.
We’ve seen this before. In 2008, during the mortgage meltdown. In 2020, as we were hit by a once-in-a-century virus. But this time, there’s no mortgage meltdown, there’s no virus. Nope. This crisis is entirely the fault of one person, Donald Trump.
This might be the first time in history that a single action by a single man has destroyed this much economic value across the planet. If we do not reverse course, this catastrophic mistake will seriously hurt people, seriously hurt small businesses, and seriously hurt the U.S.’s position in the world.
We all know what is happening. It isn’t possible to turn on a television or check your newsfeed without seeing it. Every single elected Republican in Congress knows what these tariffs would mean for people. To farmers, who are pleading for help as they brace for the trade war. To seniors who are on the verge of retiring and are now having to scramble to figure out how they can work longer. To workers who don’t know how many more paychecks they’ll get before being laid off.
I know there are those who say tariffs are always a bad idea. But I have long argued that smart tariff policy can be an important tool to help grow domestic industries, support good jobs, and promote the development of critical supply chains here at home.
For three decades, politicians from both parties have worked together to cut bad trade deals—trade deals that sold out American workers and promoted offshoring. Entire communities were hollowed out, and American families across the country were left in the wreckage.
We owe it to these communities to pave a new path forward on trade, one that invests in American workers and industry. We owe it to these communities to integrate tariffs with other economic tools to encourage domestic production and good jobs.
But everyone knows that Trump’s tariffs will not do that. They aren’t strategic—they are just plain dumb. It is widely reported that the math behind this brilliant scheme looks exactly like it came from someone typing basic questions into Chat-GPT and using the resulting bogus numbers to slap tariffs on essentially every country in the world—including on a group of islands whose only inhabitants are penguins. Plagiarizing an AI chatbot’s idea of rational tariff policy and using it to blow up the world economy would make a funny movie—if real people’s livelihoods weren’t at stake.
Trump’s on-again, off-again tariffs are not encouraging businesses to develop plants in the U.S. In fact, they’re having the opposite effect—they’re scaring off investors.
And Donald Trump’s on-again, off-again tariffs won’t bring back manufacturing jobs. Instead, companies are cutting manufacturing jobs, and factory productivity is declining across the country. These tariffs are job-killers, no matter the sector.
And as much as Trump loves taking credit for investments that were announced before he took office, the reality is layoffs are now at the highest they’ve been since the start of the pandemic, and first quarter hiring plans are at a decade-plus low.
So let me say that again: the tariffs are scaring off investors, they’re not bringing back manufacturing jobs, and layoffs are on the rise.
That’s a lot of bad news.
And believe it or not, there’s more. Donald Trump’s tariffs will also be used as an excuse by companies to jack up prices and rip off American families.
The Chairman of the Federal Reserve said that Trump’s tariffs will mean higher prices. He gave an example from the first term of the Trump Administration when their tariffs on washing machines led to companies hiking prices on washing machines. But the damage didn’t stop there. They also hiked the prices on dryers – even though there were no tariffs on dryers. Why? Because they knew that American consumers would just assume that those prices also went up because of tariffs.
Now imagine what companies can get away with when the President is loudly yelling about putting tariffs on everything, everywhere, all at once—and at rates that make no sense and could change at any moment. That’s not just a killer for honest businesses. It’s also going to be a field day for companies that want to juice their profits with a little price gouging.
CEOs are already talking about it. Here are some quotes:
“We have planned to raise prices to offset.”
“We will pass through that price.”
Can they be any clearer? They are already telling us that they don’t just pass along the cost increases that they face; they are saying they will use tariffs to push prices up higher and higher.
Every economic indicator is flashing red. Every community around the country is ringing the alarm bell. People understand that if we do not put an end to this chaos once and for all, we’re headed for an economic disaster.
As it turns out, even Republican Senators are ringing the alarm:
Sen. John Kennedy said, "Tariffs are like whiskey: A little whiskey, under the right circumstances, can be refreshing—but too much whiskey, under the wrong circumstances, can make you drunk as a goat."
Sen. Thom Tillis said, “Anyone who says there may be a little bit of pain before we get things right, needs to talk to my farmers who are one crop away from bankruptcy.”
Senator Ted Cruz said he was not “a fan of jacking up taxes on American consumers.”
Yes. No surprises here. They all know exactly what is happening. They just refuse to do anything about it. They sit on their hands while millions of Americans across the country are sitting at home wondering when Republicans in Congress are going to step up and do something.
A few senators have commented, but, so far, we’ve seen no action – none – from Republican leadership in Congress. Republican senate leadership knows how bad the tariff situation is, but it is just the same old cowering before Trump.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Speaker Mike Johnson could hold a vote immediately to shut off these tariffs and end the chaos. They could stand up to Trump and stand up for their constituents.
But apparently, Majority Leader Thune was in no hurry. He said earlier this week that he was “waiting to see what’s going to happen.”
Speaker Mike Johnson said, “We’re going to give (Trump) the space necessary to do it and we’ll see how it all develops…it’s only been a week.”
Yeah, it’s only been a week. And in that week, capital markets around the world lost trillions of dollars in value, working people and seniors have seen their savings decimated, people have already started getting pink slips, prices are already going up, and Thune and Johnson’s own constituents are urging them to fight back. But they do nothing.
Farmers like Rodney Koch who grows soybeans in Garreston, South Dakota are worried tariffs “will hurt our pocketbooks.”
Can Leader Thune explain to the farmers in his state why he is sitting on his hands while Republicans put their livelihoods at risk?
Business owners in Louisiana say they are bracing “for price hikes from Trump tariffs.”
Can Speaker Johnson explain to his constituents why he is sitting on his hands as their costs could go through the roof?
Republican leadership knows how bad this is, but they do nothing.
Normally, that would be it. Nothing the minority party, the Democrats, could do.
But with Senator Wyden’s and my bipartisan resolution, Republicans cannot stop us. We can force a vote on the tariff question.
Republicans cannot stop us from forcing a vote, but they can delay us. And that’s what they’re doing. Instead of passing a bill to save our economy, the Senate is about to vote to put a career Wall Street suit in charge of the SEC. But he’s not just any Wall Streeter. This is a corporate guy, Paul Atkins, who actually has a track record on financial crashes. The Republican nominee for chairman of the SEC was a member of the SEC during the 2008 financial crisis. His track record in the run up to the crash was impeccable: Mr. Atkins sat on his hands. No acknowledgement that the crash was coming. No steps to avoid the crash. No push to help out families or small businesses once the crash hit.
Instead, Mr. Atkins took votes that directly contributed to the crash. And, even today, despite all the evidence about how loose regulations triggered a crisis that cost 10 million families their homes and put millions more out of work, Mr. Atkins has 20/0 hindsight about his mistakes. Apparently he thinks the only thing we did wrong was not to remove more rules from the giant banks so they could have loaded up even faster on even more risk.
Once he left government, he moved to a long career helping billionaire scammers like Sam Bankman-Fried get even richer.
Getting Mr. Atkins confirmed—instead of stopping the economic chaos – this is the priority for Republicans in Congress right now. Put another fox in charge of the henhouse while the whole farm could burn to the ground.
So that’s the Republican plan: ignore the economic chaos happening around us, confirm a guy who helped cause the last crash, and then go on vacation for two weeks. If the Republicans do that, it will be a month before Congress can vote to reverse the President’s disastrous tariffs.
That is reckless. It is dangerous. And, most of all, it is cowardly. Trillions of dollars in wealth evaporated in the last week. Who knows how much irreversible damage will be done to our economy in a month or in 90 days when Trump decides to put these tariffs back on. Does anybody in America want to find out? I certainly don’t. And in the meantime, CEOs are going to keep bowing and scraping to Donald Trump at black-tie galas, hoping to secure loopholes for their companies.
But Congress has the tools to put a stop to this.
We need to act now to stop this. Senator Wyden’s and my bipartisan resolution would turn off this bogus emergency declaration.
I urge my Republican colleagues to join us and vote down the President’s abuse of emergency authorities.
Republicans in Congress have a choice to make. They can continue to bow down to Donald Trump while he sabotages our economy. Or they can stand up for the American people who elected them. Every Democrat is ready to go. We are ready to vote to end this destructive tariff war. But we need the Republicans to show some courage and act.
If Republicans don’t step up, and our economy falls off a cliff, we will know who will be responsible.
If Trump’s tariff games crash the economy, we know which Republicans will be responsible.
If Trump’s tariff games lead to layoffs across the country, we know which Republicans will be responsible.
If Trump’s tariff games force small businesses to close their doors, we know which Republicans will be responsible.
If Trump’s tariff games hurt our farmers, we know which Republicans will be responsible.
If Trump’s tariff games force retirees to find work, we know which Republicans will be responsible.
We know who is responsible and it's every single one of these cowards who won't take the blowtorch out of Donald Trump's hands.
These Republican senators understand that what is happening is not normal. They understand that we are in an extremely dangerous moment. They understand that if Congress does not act, Americans of every class, every race, every age, every region of the country, and every political party will suffer. This is the time for Republicans to act.
Donald Trump’s friends at Mar-A-Lago may flatter him over candlelit dinners and tell him he is all powerful. But Trump is not a king, and Congress is not powerless. We can act to stop him, and we must.
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