GOP defections on Canada tariff

White House expects ‘substantial’ GOP defections on Canada tariff vote in House

A White House official said that while the administration is talking to House offices Wednesday in an effort to defeat the measure, “our expectation is that the effort will not be successful.”

By Megan Messerly

The White House is anticipating “substantial” Republican defections when the House votes Wednesday on a resolution overturning President Donald Trump’s Canadian tariffs, a White House official, granted anonymity to discuss the administration’s thinking, told POLITICO.

The official said that while the White House is talking to House offices Wednesday in an effort to defeat the measure, “our expectation is that the effort will not be successful.”

Rather than scrambling to head off any GOP breakaways, the administration is focused on ensuring it maintains enough support to prevent a veto override — a striking posture for a president that has long treated party loyalty as nonnegotiable.

“The new number is two-thirds, and not whether or not you get a majority,” the official said, acknowledging that the “baseline House Republican position” is tariff skepticism.

The shift from demanding unanimity to managing margins is a tacit acknowledgement of the pent-up unease among congressional Republicans about the president’s tariff policies since he slapped sweeping levies on trading partners last spring. While the Senate has voted a handful of times to overturn some of the president’s tariffs, Speaker Mike Johnson has used procedural moves for the last several months to block such votes.

That ended Tuesday night when three Republican lawmakers — Reps. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, Kevin Kiley of California and Don Bacon of Nebraska — joined Democrats to defeat Johnson’s latest bid to block the tariff votes, after a previous GOP measure doing so expired on Jan. 31.

Now, the chamber is expected to vote Wednesday evening on a resolution from Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.) that would overturn the president’s 25 percent tariffs on Canadian goods.

The Senate has, in recent months, passed four resolutions disapproving of the tariffs: two related to the Canadian tariffs, one on tariffs on Brazil and one on the “reciprocal” tariffs Trump has imposed on nearly every country. The House’s Tuesday vote increases the likelihood that one or more of those measures will reach Trump’s desk, where he can veto the measure.

Still, the official said that the White House believes there is “no possibility” that Congress will secure the veto-proof, two-thirds majority needed to overturn the president’s tariffs. Because of that, the official added that the White House still views the vote as largely symbolic.

The vote is a particularly uncomfortable one for House Republicans running for higher office in farm states, where farmers are reeling from Trump’s sweeping levies. Rep. Ashley Hinson, who is running for Senate in Iowa, said in an interview Monday night she was still reviewing the matter.

“I haven’t had a conversation with my team yet,” she replied, when asked if she would vote to overturn the president’s tariffs on Canada, a critical trading partner of Iowa farmers.

Another Republican representing an agriculture-heavy district, Rep. Dan Newhouse of Washington, said this week he was inclined to support a disapproval of the Canada tariffs.

Asked whether the administration is giving members a free pass to oppose the tariffs, the White House official said, “I would dispute that anybody needs to take this vote.”

“I’ll say in the abstract, the vast majority of Republican voters would like Republican members to back the president,” the official said.

Still, the official added, “We’re obviously very keen and very focused on protecting the House majority and having active conversations with members.”

Tariffs have been one of the president’s favorite tools in shaping not only his domestic economic goals of reshoring manufacturing but as leverage in negotiations with foreign leaders. In just the last three months, Trump has threatened to raise levies on a number of countries — Canada, China and France among them — sometimes, in an effort to punish them for failing to bend to his will.

It also comes as the Supreme Court reviews whether the president has overstepped constitutional boundaries in his use of a 1977 emergency economic powers law to impose sweeping tariffs across the globe.

Should the measure pass the House, it will need to return to the Senate. It’s unclear whether Senate Majority Leader John Thune will be able to prevent the measure from advancing in his chamber.