The Democrats promised Wednesday to fight against the tariffs of President Donald Trump “teeth and nails” and criticized their policies for having started an “absurd, crazy and chaotic commercial war.”
The senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, held a press conference only a few hours before the revelation of Trump’s great rate, where he urged Republicans to join the Senate Democrats to a measure to block tariffs on Canadian goods.
“They know they are an increase in taxes on the American people,” he said. “They know that the stock market is in agitation, risking people’s retirement. They know that consumer confidence has decreased and the probabilities of a recession — something that people hate, it is more difficult to find a job, maintain a job, maintain their weekly budget if a recession occurs, and now our greatest financial forecasts are saying the recession recursions due to these tariffs, this tax on the argument, is very important.
“Then, we are going to fight against these teeth and nails rates. Trump has done many bad things. This is there,” said Schumer.
The senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, speaks during a press conference to address the rates that President Donald Trump in Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on April 2, 2025.
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Senator Tim Kaine, a Virginia Democrat who introduced the resolution to block Trump’s tariffs in Canada, said he expected a vote between 6 pm and 7 pm et.
Unlike most legislation in the Senate, the resolution will only need a simple majority to approve. Only a handful of Republicans would have to put on the side of the Democrats to reach that vote threshold.
President Trump, at an early morning post on his social media platform, pressed the Republicans to oppose the measure, calling some specific members of his party by name.
“Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Susan Collins de Maine, Lisa Murkowski from Alaska and Rand Paul, also from Kentucky, hope to be in the Republican car, for a change,” he wrote on his social media platform.
The president added that the bill “is just a stratagema of the Democrats to show and expose the weakness of certain Republicans, namely these four, since it will not go anywhere because the Chamber will never approve it and I, as its president, will never sign it.”
The minority leader of the House of Representatives, Hakeem Jeffries, also criticized Trump’s rates, saying that they will make the goods make the goods more expensive.
“This is not the day of liberation. It is the recession day in the United States of America,” Jeffries said. “That is what Trump’s tariffs are going to do.”
The minority leader of the House of Representatives, Hakeem Jeffries, speaks at his weekly press conference in the United States Capitol building on April 2, 2025 in Washington, DC.
Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
Meanwhile, the Republicans of the Top Chamber expressed their confidence in President Trump before this presentation of Rosas Garden. Although they admitted that there may be a “short -term pain” as a result.
“I trust the president’s instincts,” said speaker Mike Johnson when ABC News asked him if he is worried. “We fully support ourselves with its initiatives, and we will see how everything is shaken.”
“The president spoke in the state of the Union that it can be a short -term pain, ultimately, in the long term, we are going to do more things in the United States, and that other countries are going to receive a fair treatment from the United States,” said the leader of the majority, Steve Scalise.
ABC News Lauren Peller contributed to this report.
