“Those assurances have been made to other members, and I take them at face value,” Wicker said, though he said he had not spoken to the White House directly on the matter. “I really don’t think there’s much doubt about that. The hill to climb is the House.”
The tariff battle is likely to continue in the House when lawmakers return from August recess.
In a preview of likely opposition to the bill in the House in September, Rep. Richard Neal (Mass.), the top Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee, released a joint statement with Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) earlier this month slamming the latest version of the bill.
“It is extremely dangerous to give Trump massive new tariff powers, particularly after we’ve seen the disastrous impacts of his corrupt, chaotic, and inflationary tariff spree,” the lawmakers cautioned.
But the door may still be open for negotiating a compromise with dubious Democrats.
House Foreign Affairs ranking member Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.) said in a statement this month that while he wouldn’t support “handing President Trump a Trojan horse for tariff authorities he has repeatedly abused,” he still remained “open to negotiating a good faith compromise.”
His Senate counterpart was optimistic about the possibility of bringing naysayers onside, framing the discontent over the bill’s tariff provision as a misunderstanding about its scope. “People are still looking at the bill that was first introduced,” which would have allowed the White House to hit purchasers of Russian energy with 500 percent tariffs, Shaheen said.
At a press conference Tuesday evening, the SFRC ranking member said she was hopeful the recess would provide an opportunity to address concerns about the bill and smooth its path forward.
“We need to talk to folks about what their concerns are, and we’ve got some time to do that because the House is not coming back for a while,” Shaheen told reporters.
Jerry Wu, Veronika Melkozerova, Felicia Schwartz and Ben Johansen contributed to this report.
