Democratic senators plan on Wednesday to force a vote on a measure that would block President Trump’s tariffs on Canada, hoping enough of their Republican colleagues will join them to pass a resolution that calls for halting levies set to take effect this week.
The measure would face long odds in the House, where G.O.P. leaders have moved preemptively to shut down any move to end Mr. Trump’s tariffs. But Senate passage would send a powerful bipartisan signal of congressional opposition to the president’s trade war.
The resolution targets the emergency powers Mr. Trump invoked in February to impose sweeping tariffs on Canada, a move that has rattled markets and drawn bipartisan criticism from lawmakers concerned about the economic impact on their states and districts.
Mr. Trump imposed the tariffs in an executive order that cited the International Economic Emergency Powers Act, a Cold War-era law that has most often been used to impose sanctions on rogue states and human rights violators. The administration argued that unchecked drug trafficking from Canada constituted a dire threat to American national security and used it as justification to unilaterally impose 25 percent tariffs on America’s closest trading partner.
“The president has justified the imposition of these tariffs on, in my view, a made-up emergency,” said Senator Tim Kaine, Democrat of Virginia and the lead sponsor of the resolution. “The fentanyl emergency is from Mexico and China. It’s not from Canada.”
The resolution, cosponsored by fellow Democratic Senators Mark Warner of Virginia and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, seeks to revoke the emergency declaration and, with it, Mr. Trump’s ability to enforce the tariffs set to go into effect on Wednesday.