Representative Richard Neal, the Democrat expected to regain the chairmanship of the tax- and trade-focused House Ways and Means Committee, told a trade conference on Friday that he is committed to reversing the “unjustified” tariffs imposed by Trump and his “backroom deals” on trade.
“I’m committed to reversing Trump’s unjustified tariffs and pursuing trade policy that is grounded in good governance and transparency,” Neal said in an address to the conference, hosted by Katherine Tai, former U.S. trade representative under the administration of former President Joe Biden.
Neal said Trump’s deliberately chaotic trade policies had increased living costs and widened inequality between workers and the wealthiest Americans. He gave no specifics of his legislative agenda, but said his priority was to keep Mexico and Canada inside the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, whose six-year review he said leaves room for improvement.
In the U.S. Senate, Ron Wyden, who will chair the Finance Committee in January, said he would use the panel to reassert congressional authority over trade policy, bringing down costs and ending what he called “disastrous and corrupt tariffs.”
“There is overwhelming support for repealing the tariffs on products from Canada,” Wyden said, adding that he was already talking with colleagues about legislation once the new Congress convenes.
House Democrats struck the same note earlier in the week. At a news conference led by Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries, the party promised to pass a bill to stop the tariffs, while Representative Debbie Dingell of Michigan said she and Representative Gregory Meeks of New York have been working for months on legislation against the Canada tariffs.
U.S. Representative Jamie Raskin also said ending the tariffs on Canada was “very much on our agenda,” arguing that the Constitution gives Congress, not the president, power over tariffs.
The push has drawn at least one sympathetic voice from the other side. Republican Senator Ted Cruz of Texas has lamented that “tariffs have made everything too expensive.”
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