Democrats’ sweeping win in Congress gives them a bigger platform to scrutinise President Donald Trump’s trade policies. Still, they can't override a veto on any move to overturn his tariffs or withdraw his trade powers, trade and legal experts said on Wednesday.
The result could let Democrats use their control over agency funding to seek concessions from Trump on trade and other issues. Still, trade advisers are telling clients to temper expectations of near-term tariff changes.
Blake Harden, managing director for trade policy at Ernst & Young’s Washington Council office, said the election was very unlikely to affect the tariffs in place, since Congress has delegated so much trade authority to the executive branch.
Democrats will mainly focus on oversight investigations and hearings in the trade committees they will control, experts said. They want to rescind some archaic trade laws Trump has used, including Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930, which had never been used before he applied it to Canadian imports.
Reuters projects at least 235 House seats for Democrats. They have 54 in the Senate, with up to two more depending on races in Mississippi and Alaska, but they still need Republican votes to beat the 60-vote filibuster threshold. Overriding a veto would take 67 senators and 290 House members.
Richard Neal, expected to chair the House Ways and Means Committee again, said Democrats would shape an agenda that puts people’s needs first, though he offered few specifics.
Greta Peisch, a former general counsel at the US Trade Representative’s office under the Biden administration, said NBC’s estimate of a 258-seat Democratic House majority has led some in the party to ask whether enough Republicans could be persuaded to help override a veto. She called it a stretch but a question worth asking.
William Reinsch of the Center for Strategic and International Studies said Democrats have yet to agree on a proactive trade agenda, and scrapping all tariffs may not be their aim, as the party has long supported many tariffs to protect key industries.
Trump is not expected to be deterred from new tariffs under open investigations, including a Section 301 probe into excess industrial capacity that could bring duties on goods from China, India, Vietnam and more than a dozen other partners. Kelly Ann Shaw, a former White House trade adviser, said he is in legacy-building mode, though it is unclear whether partners will keep offering concessions as his term nears its end.
Canada’s trade minister for US trade, Dominic LeBlanc, said on Wednesday the election would not change Ottawa’s stance and that talks were continuing.
