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President Trump hopes Mexico can avoid tariffs by stopping migrants.
USA TODAY

WASHINGTON – Top Republicans warned the Trump administration Tuesday against imposing new tariffs on all Mexican imports, saying the president risks an embarrassing congressional reversal if he goes through with the plan.

President Donald Trump has threatened to impose 5% tariffs on Mexico starting next week unless the Mexican government stops the flow of migrants coming to the U.S. border. Trump said he would increase the tariffs by 5 percentage points each month and warned they could reach 25% by Oct. 1.  

But Senate GOP leaders publicly and privately pressed the White House to negotiate a solution with Mexican officials and said Trump could face a congressional blockade if he goes through with the levies.

“Republicans don’t like taxes on American consumers, which is what tariffs are,” said Sen. Ron Johnson, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

“I think the president and the administration ought to be concerned about another vote of disapproval,” said Johnson, R-Wis., referring to a legislative tool lawmakers could use to overturn Trump’s justification for the tariffs.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will hold pivotal talks with Mexican officials Wednesday amid the growing political backlash. 

Johnson and others vented their frustration over Trump’s tariff threat during a closed-door lunch on Tuesday with several administration officials who were dispatched to the Hill to explain the president’s legal basis for the tariffs.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said that Trump administration officials got an earful from lawmakers expressing “deep concern and resistance to imposing tariffs on trade with Mexico because it would hurt American jobs.” He said the current showdown with Mexico is like “a giant game of chicken,” with potentially disastrous economic results.

“It’s like two trucks headed straight at each other on a country road. If the outcome of this is that Mexico blinks, and they turn, and they actually become active, productive partners in helping stop illegal immigration, that would be a good outcome,” Cruz said. “But if the outcome of this game of chicken is massive new tariffs that destroy jobs in Texas, and across the country, that would be a terrible mistake.”

Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard and other top officials are in Washington this week, lobbying the Trump administration against imposing the tariffs – saying it will weaken Mexico’s ability to address the migration crisis. 

Most of the migrants trying to come to the United States are from Central America, not Mexico. They’re fleeing violence, poverty and corruption and other problems in their home countries. 

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In a news conference on Monday, Ebrard and other Mexican officials noted that their government has already taken major steps toward stemming the flow of migrants, by cracking down on human smuggling and returning more than 80,000 migrants crossing through Mexico to their home countries.

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Children traveling with the Central American migrants that hope to reach the United States, play at the beach next to the US-Mexico border fence in Playas de Tijuana, Baja California State, Mexico, on Dec. 29, 2018. El Salvador insisted Saturday that it is taking steps to curb illegal migration to the United States, fending off criticism from President Donald Trump, a day after he threatened to cut off aid to nations in Central America’s Northern Triangle, Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. Guillermo Arias, AFP/Getty Images

Magdelena, a Guatemalan migrant, feeds her toddler son at Holy Cross Retreat Center, which has become a makeshift shelter for migrants released by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), in Las Cruces, New Mexico, on Dec. 27, 2018. She was part of a group of 1,300 people unexpectedly released by ICE over the Christmas holidays. Shelters in El Paso, inundated with migrants, have coordinated with Las Cruces Shelters to house migrants the day they are released from ICE custody. Paul Ratje, AFP/Getty Images

Honduran migrant Leivi Ortega, 22, center, carries her two-year-old daughter Naomi Michell as they climb into the back of a police van with more than a dozen other Central Americans who had been waiting on a rainy beach at night in hopes of finding an opportunity to cross the U.S. border, before police decided to take them back to a distant migrant shelter, in Playas de Tijuana, Mexico, Wednesday, Dec. 5, 2018. Discouraged by the long wait to apply for asylum through official ports of entry, many Central American migrants from recent caravans are choosing to cross the U.S. border wall and hand themselves in to border patrol agents. Rebecca Blackwell, AP

Migrants depart on a bus from a temporary shelter where they were staying, on their way to a new shelter on the eastern side of the city, on Nov. 30, 2018 in Tijuana, Mexico. Rains yesterday in Tijuana brought flooding to sections of the old shelter, which is located in a soccer complex. Officials hope to re-locate at least 3,000 of the migrants, many from the ‘migrant caravan’, to the new shelter. Around 6,000 migrants from Central America were crowded into the original shelter which was intended to hold 3,000. Mario Tama, Getty Images

Residents stand on a hill before barriers, wrapped in concertina wire, separating Mexico and the United States, where the border meets the Pacific Ocean, in Tijuana, Mexico, Saturday, Nov. 17, 2018. Many of the nearly 3,000 migrants have reached the border with California. The mayor has called the migrants’ arrival an “avalanche” that the city is ill-prepared to handle. Marco Ugarte, AP

Sairy Hueso, part of the Central American migrant caravan, carries her daughter Etzabe Ponce, as she stands next to her husband while waiting in line to receive a number as part of the process to apply for asylum in the United States, at the border in Tijuana, Mexico Tijuana, Mexico, Friday, Nov. 16, 2018. Rodrigo Abd, AP

Members of the caravan of Central American migrants prepare to leave Mexico City, Mexico, and resume their journey to the United States on Nov. 10, 2018. After failing to get the UN to provide free transportation, thousands of migrants from the caravan of Central Americans camped in Mexico City agreed to prepare to leave the capital on Saturday and resume their march on foot to the United States. Groups of migrants, mostly young, did not comply with this decision and left early in the morning for Queretaro, north of the capital, although most of the approximately 5,000 people in the caravan remained in the camp, following the indications of Pueblo Sin Fronteras, the organization that accompanies them. Sashenka Gutierrez, EPA-EFE

Hundreds of members of the Central American migrant caravan move in the early hours toward their next destination on Nov. 04, 2018, in Isla, Mexico. The group of migrants, many of them fleeing violence in their home countries, last took a rest day on Wednesday and have resumed their march to the United States border. As fatigue from the heat, distance and poor sanitary conditions has set in, the number of people participating in the march has slowly dwindled, but a significant group are still determined to get to the United Sates. The U.S. will deploy more than 5,000 active-duty troops to the U.S.-Mexico border in an effort to prevent members of the migrant caravan from illegally entering the country. Spencer Platt, Getty Images

Central American migrants, part of the caravan hoping to reach the U.S. border, get a ride on a truck in Donaji, Oaxaca state, Mexico, Friday, Nov. 2, 2018. The migrants had already made a grueling 40-mile trek from Juchitan, Oaxaca, on Thursday, after they failed to get the bus transportation they had hoped for. But hitching rides allowed them to get to Donaji early, and some headed on to a town even further north, Sayula. Rodrigo Abd, AP

Ernesto Martinez, 27, and his wife Yesenia, 23, are traveling with their three daughters, including a baby who was just 17-days-old when they joined the caravan on Oct. 20. The family is from San Martin, Retalhuleu, Guatemala. They have pushed the baby in a stroller more than 180 miles crossing through the state of Chiapas, before reaching the state of Oaxaca on Oct. 27, 2018. Nick Oza, Arizona Republic, via USA TODAY Network

Central American migrant Cristian pushes a carriage occupied by his daughters; Karen, 5, left, and Beiyi, 4, as they make their way to Mapastepec, Mexico, Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018, in a caravan headed to the U.S. Rodrigo Abd, AP

Marvin Sanabria, a Central American migrant traveling with a caravan to the U.S., kneels in prayer after waking up, in Huixtla, Mexico, Tuesday. The caravan, estimated to include more than 7,000 people, had advanced but still faced more than 1,000 miles, and likely much further, to the end of the journey. Moises Castillo/AP

Honduran migrants, who were taking part in a caravan heading to the US, board a bus to return to Honduras, in Ciudad Tecun Uman, Guatemala, on Oct. 20, 2018. Some 220 Honduran migrants were returning to their country and some 130 were waiting at a shelter Saturday, according to a police source, while thousands who forced their way through Guatemala’s northwestern border and flooded onto a bridge leading to Mexico, were waiting at the border in the hope of continuing their journey. Johan Ordonez, AFP/Getty Images

Trump dismissed those efforts Tuesday and seemed to double-down on his tariff threat.

“Millions and millions of people are coming right through Mexico,” Trump asserted at a joint news conference in London with British Prime Minister Theresa May. “Mexico should step up and stop this onslaught.” 

He said Republicans would be “foolish” to try to block the tariffs. But experts said Trump’s plan is vulnerable to a congressional override. 

“This is such a frontal assault not just on Congress’ constitutional power but really on what has been a core of Republican ideology for now, which is a belief in free trade and low taxes,” Edward Alden, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, a foreign policy think tank, said during a conference call Tuesday. 

Alden said it seems to be “sinking in up on the Hill” that these tariffs could wipe out the economic benefits of the tax cuts that Republicans enacted in 2017.

Shannon K. O’Neil, an expert on Latin America with the council, said Trump’s demands that Mexico stop the influx of migrants is unrealistic.  

“The challenge for Mexico frankly is that they don’t have the capacity to do this,” she said. “This is a problem that the United States admits that they can’t deal with and they expect Mexico, a country with fewer resources and a much less capable bureaucracy, to do that work for them.”

It’s not clear if Pompeo and Ebrard will be able to find a solution to the stand-off during their meeting on Wednesday. But lawmakers said they were hoping for that outcome so that Congress does not have to step in. 

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., side-stepped reporters’ questions Tuesday about what he would do if Trump went through with the tariffs.

“We’re still hoping that this can be avoided,” McConnell said after the lunch meeting. “Apparently these talks are going well. Our hope is the tariffs will be avoided.”

Cruz was more direct, noting that a 25% tariff would translate into nearly $30 billion in new taxes on his home state of Texas, which imports more than $100 billion in goods from Mexico annually.

“There is no doubt we have an emergency at the border,” Cruz said. “But there is no reason for Texas farmers and ranchers and manufacturers and small businesses to pay the price of massive new taxes.”

Contributing: Deborah Berry

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