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The House of Representatives has voted to overturn Donald Trump’s tariffs on Canada in a major rebuke of the US president’s signature economic policy.
The Republican-controlled House voted 219-211 on Wednesday in favour of terminating the national emergency that Trump invoked in February 2025 to impose tariffs on Canadian imports. Six Republicans joined Democrats to support the measure.
The president is likely to veto any anti-tariff legislation that arrives on his desk. However, Wednesday’s vote will be seen as a blow to Trump’s efforts to reshape the global trade order and signals growing discontent among Republican lawmakers about his aggressive tariff regime heading into November’s midterm elections.
The six Republicans voted to overturn levies on Canada despite Trump appearing to threaten lawmakers in a Truth Social post on Wednesday evening. “Any Republican, in the House or the Senate, that votes against TARIFFS will seriously suffer the consequences come Election time, and that includes Primaries!” he posted.
“TARIFFS have given us Economic and National Security, and no Republican should be responsible for destroying this privilege,” he added.
Opinion polls suggest the majority of Americans disapprove of the president’s use of levies. A Pew poll out last week showed 60 per cent of US adults disapproved of the increase in tariffs, including more than a quarter of Republicans.
The duties have caused economic pain in Canada, one of the US’s closest allies and its second-largest trading partner. Over the past year, Canadians boycotted US goods and Prime Minister Mark Carney has sought to diversify the country’s trading relations to break its dependence on the US.
Democratic lawmakers are expected to force similar votes to try to overturn Trump’s tariffs on other countries including Mexico and Brazil in the coming weeks.
The Senate separately voted several times last year to rebuke the president’s levies on several countries including Canada and Brazil.
Gregory Meeks, a Democratic congressman from New York, led the charge on Wednesday’s vote.
“The Speaker continues to abdicate his responsibilities, ceding Congress’s Article I authority to Donald Trump,” Meeks said in a post on X ahead of the vote, referring to Speaker of the House Mike Johnson. “Republicans now face a clear choice: go on the record and join Democrats in ending these cost-raising tariffs or keep forcing American families to pay for them.”
Wednesday’s measure came a day after three Republican House members crossed party lines to stop Johnson from preventing votes on Trump’s tariffs.
Johnson dismissed the rebellion as “life with a razor-thin majority” on Wednesday, but warned it would be a “big mistake” for Republicans to undermine Trump’s trade agenda.
“I don’t think we need to go down the road of trying to limit the president’s power while he is in the midst of negotiating America first trade agreements with nations around the world,” Johnson told Fox Business on Wednesday morning before the Canada tariff vote.
“This is pending at the US Supreme Court,” Johnson added. “That decision could come down on any day . . . I just think we need to pause Congress’s consideration of this and not get in the way of the president and what he is trying to achieve.”
The Supreme Court is expected to rule on the legality of Trump’s tariffs in the coming months. The court in November heard arguments over whether the president had the authority to invoke the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose levies around the world.
The constitution gives Congress the power to regulate foreign commerce and levy taxes. Trump is the first president to use IEEPA to impose tariffs.
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