How Democrats will try to end Trump’s tariffs

The battle for Congress is over. The war over President Donald Trump‘s tariffs is about to heat up.

The knotted web of tariffs that Trump spent the last two years weaving could soon face its biggest threat, as Democrats prepare to unload their new legislative firepower against the Republican president’s signature policy.

Democrats have made no secret of their plans to bombard Trump and his associates with investigations as soon as the next Congress is sworn in. They are also preparing a first-100-hours legislative blitz, putting forward a series of bills that would unwind much of Trump’s agenda.

Both prongs of attack will take aim at Trump’s unprecedented use of tariffs, which Democrats have quickly identified as a main target following their landslide victory in Tuesday’s midterm elections.

Ending Trump’s tariff regime, and especially his trade war against Canada, is something Democrats “absolutely have to do immediately,” Sen.-elect Abdul El-Sayed, D-Mich., told MS NOW’s “Morning Joe” Thursday.

Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the Democratic minority leader who could be elected House speaker in the next Congress, has made clear that ending Trump’s tariffs is a top priority.

“We should restore congressional authority as it relates to tariffs, because the Trump tariffs are making life more expensive for the American people,” he said at a press conference in late August.

If picked as speaker, Jeffries would speed legislation to the House floor that reasserts congressional authority over trade.

Democrats are also laying the groundwork for investigations into Trump’s tariffs, which the party folded into its winning campaign message linking high costs with alleged Trumpworld corruption.

Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, on Oct. 28 asked Trump to hand over records related to tariff exemptions. Trump, Raskin alleges, has wielded the exemption power to cut “sweetheart deals” for industries whose leaders have plied the president with gifts.

The plans are likely to ratchet up the pressure, both legally and politically, that Trump’s tariffs were already facing.

The administration is already embroiled in multiple lawsuits challenging different parts of the government’s tariff policy.

The most recent suit, filed Oct. 20, targets Trump’s use of a Great Depression-era law to impose 50% tariffs on a range of Canadian goods.

Another court case accuses Trump of trying to recreate the near-global “liberation day” tariffs that the Supreme Court struck down as illegal in late February. The administration has since been ordered to refund $166 billion…