Democrats spent the midterm campaign promising to wipe out President Donald Trump’s tariffs. Now that the votes are counted, the math tells a very different story: they can’t do it without Republicans.
Democrats won control of both chambers in Tuesday’s midterms, with at least 54 Senate seats and a House majority as dozens of races remain uncalled, The Center Square reported via Just the News. But overriding a presidential veto takes 67 votes in the Senate and 290 in the House. “No outcome in the remaining contests gets Democrats there,” the report found.
That hasn’t slowed the victory laps. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., in line to chair the Senate Finance Committee, vowed to use the panel to “reassert congressional authority over our country’s trade policy to bring down costs, end Trump’s disastrous and corrupt tariffs, reestablish critical trade partnerships, and hold trade cheats accountable.”
Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., the incoming Democratic caucus chair, promised Democrats “will pass a bill to stop the stupid Trump tariffs jacking up prices on Americans.”
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, now running for speaker, was asked at a Nov. 4 news conference whether he expected Republicans to help against a veto and whether an override was even possible. His answer: “We’re going to have a conversation as a caucus upon our return about what the agenda looks like, but we’re going to get out of the gate fast.” He did not address the veto.
The bill already exists. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer introduced the End Trump’s Tariff Tax Act, S.5390, on Sept. 14. It would terminate and refund the duties, has 29 cosponsors including Wyden, and has sat in the Finance Committee without a vote ever since. Neither Wyden’s office nor Schumer’s answered questions about how they would get past Trump’s veto, or what would replace the revenue.
And the revenue is real money. Net customs duties totaled $173.2 billion in fiscal 2026, according to the Treasury Department. The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates repealing the remaining tariffs would cost about $85.5 billion a year. Tax Foundation economist Erica York put the cost of repealing every tariff imposed since 2017 at nearly $1.8 trillion over a decade, and wrote that a broad-based 1% value-added tax would raise enough to replace it.
There’s another catch: refunds go to the importers who paid the duties, not the shoppers who absorbed the higher prices. After the Supreme Court struck down the earlier tariffs in February in Learning Resources Inc. v. Trump, the government returned $144.6 billion to importers in fiscal 2026. Independent Institute economist Phillip Magness told The Center Square that those companies “are not required to pass them along to consumers, even though consumers incurred the tariff’s incidence from higher prices.”
Magness said the courts remain “the most likely route by which they could be unwound or repealed before the next administration.” A challenge to the Section 301 tariffs is pending at the U.S. Court of International Trade, and a separate USTR investigation into foreign excess manufacturing capacity could add new tariffs on top of the ones Democrats want gone.
So the “blue wave” that was supposed to end Trump’s trade agenda runs straight into a veto it can’t override. Congress returns Nov. 9, and the new Congress is seated Jan. 3. Democrats still haven’t explained how their campaign promise gets past the president’s desk.
Source: justthenews.com
