Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) reinforced his stance on the bill to restore tariff power to Congress after President Donald Trump implied he was a “rebel Republican.”
Trump announced tariffs against 86 countries last week. Bacon clarified that he and the bipartisan group of Congressmen who support his bill aren’t “anti-tariffs in all situations, but we should have a vote.”
“I’m not trying to tell the president how to negotiate, but he has to come to Congress and request approval when he wants to do tariffs. And a lot of Congress will support tariffs on China. They would support tariffs on Russia, which was not on the tariff list this time, which they should have been,” Bacon said on CNBC News’s Squawk Box on Wednesday. “I mean, we have the power of the purse, and we gave the president emergency powers, but these are not emergency powers. This is resetting tariff policy, and that’s really in the realm of Congress.”
China currently faces a 104% tariff after it increased tariffs against U.S. goods following Trump’s announcement. The Chinese Communist Party filed a lawsuit against the United States with the World Trade Organization over its initial 10% tariff. In an additional move to pressure the U.S., China issued tariffs against Canada.
At the moment, Bacon, Rep. Jeff Hurd (R-CO), and Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) sponsor the Trade Review Act of 2025. Bacon told the Washington Examiner that the bill is supported by 10 more Republican members of Congress, which is more than the slim majority Republicans have in the House.
“I don’t think the founders wanted a single person to make a decision and change all of our tariff policy and wage a tariff war against 60 nations without congressional approval. So, I think it’s, first of all, [the legislation is] constitutional, and two, I have concerns,” Bacon said. “I think this is a very high-risk move by the president when you have a trade war with 60 countries. We don’t have a good experience with this. I mean, the last time we’ve done something like this was 1930. That did not turn out well.”
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The White House said Trump will veto the bill, including the equivalent bill in the Senate.
The tariffed countries include those that are largely uninhabited or imposed no tariffs on U.S. goods. The Trump administration explained it included these countries to prevent them from avoiding taxes on their goods.
