Vance breaks key tie after Senate fails to reject Trump’s national emergency on tariffs

The Senate failed Wednesday to pass a resolution rejecting President Donald Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ tariff agenda, as several Republicans signaled beforehand they favored halting the relatively new levies, and Vice President JD Vance was called in to break an ensuing procedural tie.

The disapproval resolution failed 49-49, with three Republicans joining all Democrats present in attempting to throw a wrench in Trump’s tariff plans.

After that, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., put forward a motion to reconsider the resolution, then moved to table – or kill – the initial motion, which procedurally would prevent Democrats from forcing such a vote again.

That vote also deadlocked, but after about 80 minutes, Vice President Vance cast a tie-breaking vote in his dual role as president of the Senate.

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., had introduced the resolution to end Trump’s ‘national emergency’ as a ‘privileged’ one – meaning it would require a vote regardless of the upper chamber being in Republican hands. The House, however, has signaled it is not inclined to pursue the same.

Sens. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Rand Paul, R-Ky., split from the rest of the GOP and sought to end the national emergency that backs the tariffs. Sens. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., did not vote. 

Whitehouse was reportedly on a plane back from South Korea and wouldn’t make the gavel, according to Providence’s CBS affiliate.

Before the vote, there was chatter about key absences that could swing the vote one way or another, as key tallies are all about the math.

One tariff critic told reporters earlier Wednesday that the disapproval motion sent ‘the message I want to send’ that tariffs must be more ‘discriminatory.’

‘It’s not perfect, I think it’s too broad,’ Collins said, according to Politico.

In remarks on the Senate floor earlier in the day, Paul, – one of the most vocal opponents to tariffs and proponents of free trade – who suggested conservatives may want to reconsider their support for the tariffs.

‘You know, there was an old-fashioned conservative principle that believed that less taxes were better than more taxes,’ Paul said.

‘That if you tax something, you got less of it. So that if you place a new tax on trade, you’ll get less trade.’

‘There was also this idea that you didn’t do taxation without representation. That idea goes not only back to our American Revolution, it goes back to the English Civil War as well. It goes back probably to Magna Carta,’ he said of the phrase, which for some time was the District of Columbia’s official slogan, given its lack of full-vote representation in Congress.

Paul said the Constitution forbids taxation being implemented in a way that circumvents Congress and laid out why he thought that was the case today.

‘An emergency has been declared, as the Senator from Virginia remarked,’ he said. ‘Everywhere, there’s an emergency everywhere. Sounds like an emergency everywhere is really an emergency nowhere.’

Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., had previously balked at Trump’s tariffs on Canada, saying that while fentanyl proliferation is an emergency as the president declared, it is not one that is germane to Canada.

Reached for comment, the office of Sen. Mitch McConnell – Paul’s fellow Kentucky Republican – did not offer any further remarks after reports suggested he too is uncomfortable with Trump’s tariff agenda.

Fox News Digital also reached out to Murkowski for comment in that regard.

Schumer commented on the ultimate result, saying Republicans ‘voted to keep the Trump tariff-tax in place. They own the Trump tariffs and higher costs on America’s middle-class families.’

Fox News’ Tyler Olson contributed to this report.