In a blatant display of disloyalty, three Senate Republicans contradicted the rest of the party’s senators in a vote that almost derailed President Trump’s tariff strategy, with the ruling coming in at 49-49 and Republicans narrowly avoiding contradicting the president.
For context, on April 30, 2025, the Senate responded to President Trump’s recently introduced global tariff strategy with a vote that would have reversed the tariffs imposed on Canada, which several Senate Republicans — Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), and Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), favored, going against the rest of their party and the president himself in a move that attracted criticism from fellow senators.
Before the vote, Sen. Murkowski asserted in an April 10, 2025, speech that she sided with the Democrats on tariffs and wanted to counteract President Trump, saying, “I think it’s time for Congress to reassert itself, whether it’s on tariffs, whether it’s on the power of appropriation, whether it’s overseeing the bodies, the agencies that we as a body have authorized.”
However, Sen. Murkowski granted that President Trump’s efforts to restore manufacturing to the U.S. were “important” and “admirable.” Nevertheless, she argued that “there has been general agreement that the message from the administration has been decidedly mixed.” She added, “Which leads to further confusion among our trading partners and our allies. If nobody understands where the finish line is, it’s hard to reach it.”
On the other hand, Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA), a longtime ally of President Trump, defended Trump’s tariff strategy, telling the press, “People are willing to give the president an opportunity to prove that the new system works.” Similarly, Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) said that the results of the recent vote make it clear that senators “believe that the President’s policies deserve to be tried and see if they’re successful.”
Following the vote, backlash from the right was swift. After Sen. Rand Paul voted to block the tariffs, Rep. Randy Fine (R-FL) reportedly criticized Sen. Paul’s decision to CNN’s Boris Sanchez, saying, “[Trump’s] doing things the new way. If Rand Paul wants to get together with Bernie Sanders to fight Donald Trump, well, that’s on him. I know that I’m here to fight Democrats, not to work with Democrats to undermine what President Trump is trying to do.”
In the same interview, Rep. Fine staunchly defended President Trump’s Tariff strategy, saying, “Look, tariffs are apparently a great idea when other countries do them, but when President Trump wants to level the playing field by fighting back, everyone loses their courage.” He added, “He’s trying to create a fundamental reordering in how we think about trade policy in the world.”
Watch Sen. Rand Paul’s critique of Trump’s tariffs:
