How the House Has Taken Itself Out of the Tariff Fight

On Tuesday morning, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson walked into a press conference in the lobby of the Republican National Committee’s headquarters. He and his leadership team gathered behind the lectern flanked by signs that listed “HOUSE GOP ACCOMPLISHMENTS” for the first year of the 119th Congress. They included the passage of partisan measures such as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and the summer’s rescissions package, as well as bipartisan bills on border security and cryptocurrency.

“In spite of the fact we had [a] razor thin majority … we still have had one of the most consequential Congresses in the great history of this extraordinary nation,” Johnson said. “And if you look at what has been accomplished for the first 10 months of this term, this year, the 119th Congress, this new administration, you can stack that up against any Congress in history.”

But the accomplishments Johnson touted masked a growing discontent in his caucus over actions from the president and House leadership that members feel have made the chamber ineffective. The surprise resignation announcement of firebrand Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia highlighted this discontent and blew the lid off concerns that Republicans would lose control of the House following next year’s midterm elections. Several members expressed their complaints anonymously to Punchbowl News last week. “This entire White House team has treated ALL members like garbage. ALL. And Mike Johnson has let it happen because he wanted it to happen,” said one House Republican.

Rep. Kevin Kiley of California is one GOP member who has publicly shared his concerns about the House being sidelined by President Donald Trump’s administration and House leadership.

“I certainly think that the House has literally been absent for much of the last several months, and figuratively in a number of ways as well,” Kiley, who was critical of Johnson’s decision to keep the House out of session during the government shutdown, told The Dispatch. “And I do think that it is past time for the House to reassert itself, reclaim its authority under Article I, and try to actually lead on some of these key policy areas, rather than hoping that someone else will solve the problem.”

This Congress is not the first to feel mistreated by a presidential administration, nor is its leadership the first to cede power to the executive branch. But despite the GOP caucus’s complaints on that front, the rank-and-file at several points this year took votes that effectively tied its hands when it came to stopping the administration from seizing authority traditionally wielded by Congress: its tariff authority. 

Trump’s unprecedented use of emergency powers on trade to impose import duties on basically the entire world has been politically unpopular, but the House has practically neutered its ability to rein him in, bowing to Johnson’s tactics to tamp down resistance to the president’s tariffs.

For a bill that does not have a supermajority of support, the House must first adopt a “rule” for considering it, laying out how much time for debate the bill will get, as well as other procedural considerations. That’s a pretty routine practice, but early in the year Johnson began putting language into those rules—which advanced legislation unrelated to tariffs—that prevented the House from considering measures to repeal Trump’s import duties. House members have the power to file a resolution to terminate the national emergency the president declared to levy the tariffs—and make it “privileged” to force a vote on it. But the language Johnson has added to several rules this year allows leadership to block any such resolution.

The first time he did it was in March, when the House adopted the rule for its stopgap spending bill to avert a government shutdown. The language there stopped the House from quashing tariffs on Mexico, Canada, and China Trump imposed on February 1, and every GOP member save one, Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, voted in favor. Following Trump’s announcement of the sweeping April 2 “Liberation Day” tariffs, Johnson tucked similar language into the rule to consider its budget resolution—the framework for what would become the OBBBA—that stopped votes on resolutions rescinding those duties until September 30. Three Republicans voted against that rule: Massie and Rep. Victoria Spartz of Indiana, both of whom later voted against the budget resolution, and Rep. Mike Turner of Ohio, who supported the underlying legislation but opposed the procedural vote because of the tariff language.

Johnson argued that Trump needed “the space” to work on tariff policy. “I've made it very clear I think the president has executive authority,” he told reporters in April. “It's an appropriate level of authority to deal with the unfair trade practices. That's part of the role of the president, is to negotiate with other countries.”

As September 30 approached, Johnson tried to extend the period in which tariff resolutions would be barred until March 31. This time, however, he tucked the language into a rule for less pivotal pieces of legislation dealing with crime in Washington, D.C., among other things. Kiley, Massie, and Spartz, along with Reps. Don Bacon of Nebraska and Jay Obernotle and Tom McClintock of California, originally voted against the rule, denying it a majority. Members of the House GOP leadership then had to flip enough of the holdouts to advance the measure, getting Bacon, Obernolte, and McClintock to vote “yes” after agreeing to create an informal tariff working group among GOP members and extending the ban on tariffs resolutions only until January 31. 

“The House literally took a vote to divest itself of power over a very important issue,” Kiley told The Dispatch. “Whatever you think of the tariffs, whatever you think of this one or that one, Congress should not be relinquishing its Article I legislative authority.” Kiley added that he told Johnson recently the House needed to reverse course on the tariff power, but he declined to share Johnson’s response.

Asked whether it was the correct move in hindsight to support the rules tying the House’s hands on tariffs, Bacon told The Dispatch, “I would have preferred them not being in there.” The tariff working group, led by Rep. Adrian Smith of Nebraska, the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee’s Trade Subcommittee, did meet, Bacon said, but nothing came out of it on the policy front.

“It gave us a chance to voice what was the negative impact that we're seeing at tariffs in our districts,” said Bacon. “And so, I think the speaker took our feedback, and I know for a fact he's relayed it to the president.”

Following Liberation Day, Bacon introduced a bill that would limit the president’s power to impose tariffs unilaterally, but it has been stuck in committee since the day it was introduced, and the bill’s other Republican co-sponsors have not been as vocal as Bacon in pushing back against Johnson’s procedural tactics. Freshman Rep. Jeff Hurd of Colorado, an original co-sponsor, said he preferred to take the issue of the speaker’s tactics up with Johnson privately.

"It's something that I think is important to raise—and definitely appropriate to talk with the speaker and leadership about that, but that's something that would happen direct with the speaker and leadership, rather than in the press,” he told The Dispatch.

Meanwhile, in October, the Senate passed three resolutions to terminate Trump’s Liberation Day tariffs, as well as others on Brazil and Canada. If those resolutions were to make it to the House floor, they would have a good shot at passing. Of course, for them to take effect, either Trump would need to sign them, or Congress would need a two-thirds majority to override the president’s veto, so any bare-majority passage most likely would be merely symbolic. Still, Kiley noted the Senate’s actions and expressed dismay that the House cannot act on them.

“The House has not even voted on those. I think that’s a problem,” he said.