On Senate Floor, Shaheen Condemns Proposed Trump Tariffs that Would Increase Costs on Granite Staters
(Washington, DC) – U.S. Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) delivered remarks on the Senate floor condemning President Trump’s proposed tariffs on Mexico and Canada, New Hampshire’s largest trading partner, that could cause prices on everything from gas to cars to groceries to skyrocket, hurting Granite Staters and Granite State businesses. Click here to watch the full speech.
Key Quotes from Senator Shaheen:
- “Even though many of these tariff taxes were delayed, they're still scheduled to go into effect next month, and they've created unnecessary panic and uncertainty among businesses and families across the country and in New Hampshire.”
- “President Trump campaigned on a promise to lower prices for everything. The tariffs that he’s talking about would have the exact opposite effect.”
- “For Elon Musk and his billionaire friends, and the billionaire friends of the President, $150 to $250 may not sound like a lot in the winter, but there are a lot of people in New Hampshire for whom $150 to $250 is the difference between staying warm and being cold.”
- “I'm glad for the delay. I don't want people to misunderstand that. But how is a business or a family supposed to plan when they don't know if important costs like gas or heating or groceries are going to spike any day?”
Remarks as delivered can be found below:
We're here today to talk about a very serious issue, and that is the tariffs that President Trump is talking about imposing on goods from Canada and Mexico, and the impact that will have on Americans.
On Saturday, President Trump announced a 25% tariff, which would be a tax on imported goods from Canada and Mexico, and a 10% tariff, which would amount to a tax on imported energy from Canada, and on all goods from China.
So, 10% on all goods from China and then 10% on energy from Canada.
He's also threatened universal tariffs on all countries.
Now, thankfully, the tariffs that he announced on Canada and Mexico appear to have been delayed for a month, but the tariff taxes on China are now in effect.
And even though many of these tariff taxes were delayed, they're still scheduled to go into effect next month, and they've created unnecessary panic and uncertainty among businesses and families across the country and in New Hampshire.
Now, I want to point out in the beginning very clearly that it's not foreign countries who pay these taxes, these tariff taxes, it’s Americans who pay these tariff taxes.
These are tariff taxes on imported goods, meaning that the person or company who is importing the good will be footing the bill - and these costs will be passed on to American consumers and businesses.
And you don’t have to take my word for it: Best Buy’s CEO said, and I quote, “the vast majority of that tariff will probably be passed on to the consumer as a price increase.”
And Walmart’s CFO said, “there will probably be cases where prices will go up for consumers.”
Columbia Sportswear’s CEO said about tariffs “we’re set to raise prices” and “it’s going to be very, very difficult to keep products affordable.”
Now, if we look at the cost of just the tariff taxes that were originally announced on Saturday, those would raise costs for the average American household by more than $1,200 a year.
And if we get into a trade war with increasingly high tariffs on both sides—and that’s what it appears could be happening with China—those costs would go up even more.
Now, President Trump campaigned on a promise to lower prices for everything. The tariffs that he’s talking about would have the exact opposite effect.
I'm glad the administration and the President listened to reason.
He delayed the start of these tariffs, but I hope we don't have to be back here in a few weeks making this case again.
And I want to make sure that people understand what these tariff taxes would do and highlight some of the areas where Americans would be directly affected.
First is energy.
America imports more oil and gas from Canada than any other product.
In New Hampshire, more than half of the gas in people's cars comes from Canada.
These tariff taxes would make gas prices go up, and they could even lead to supply shortages because refinery and delivery infrastructure just doesn't turn on a dime.
President Trump's new 10% tariff tax on energy from Canada would also directly raise the cost of keeping warm for Granite Staters during the coldest months of this year.
In New Hampshire, our number one import from Canada is heating oil, and nearly a quarter of a million households in New Hampshire—that's about 40% of our households—more than Vermont, I think
Senator Welch, rely on fuel oil to heat their homes.
We're the second highest state in the nation, next to Maine who relies on number two heating oil, to heat our homes.
Another hundred thousand Granite Staters rely on propane and about 30,000 homes use wood.
So that’s about 60% of New Hampshire that relies on delivered fuel to stay warm. Much of that is coming from Canada.
The average home in New Hampshire on heating oil, uses about 600 gallons in the winter and for older, draftier homes, and sadly we have a lot of those in New Hampshire, or those who are further up north, families may be using upwards of a thousand gallons a winter.
And with temperatures dipping as low as 20 below zero in the state in recent weeks, heating oil is a real necessity.
And my constituents are already getting notices, and I don't know, Senator Welch, if the same is true of your constituents, but I bet it is. But they're saying that those notices tell them their costs are going to go up if these tariffs go into effect.
On Sunday, I heard from Derek in Sandwich, New Hampshire, who received a letter from his heating supplier, Irving Oil, that informed him that his bill for heating oil would be going up.
The letter stated, “As you may be aware, the U.S. government has announced a new tariff on imports from Canada, including the heating oil or propane that Irving Energy delivers to you.”
And the letter went on to describe that the tariff costs will be added to the price that he pays, even though he already has a contract.
As Derek wrote to me, "I will now have less to spend locally. My local businesses will suffer through lost business and increased costs. And then their suppliers and employees will suffer. It's a real hardship.”
On inauguration day, this year, heating oil cost an average of $3.93 a gallon in New Hampshire.
Tacking an ill-advised 10% tariff tax on heating oil from Canada could mean about $150 to $250 more for many in New Hampshire just to keep warm through the winter.
And while for Elon Musk and his billionaire friends, and the billionaire friends of the president, $150 to $250 may not sound like a lot in the winter, but there are a lot of people in New Hampshire for whom $150 to $250 is the difference between staying warm and being cold in the winter.
So let me also be clear: We don't use gas and heating oil from Canada because we don't produce it here in the United States. We do it because it makes logistical and economic sense because in New England, we are at the end of the pipelines that are coming from Texas and the south.
Now, the United States produces more oil than any other country in the history of the world.
That was true during the last three years of the first Trump Administration. It was true for the last four years of the Biden Administration.
But for New Hampshire, the Saint John Refinery in Canada simply provides us the closest, lowest-cost supply.
And by the way, that refinery sources as much as half of its crude oil from the United States.
So, it's helping oil producers in the United States send their oil the refinery, and we get it back in New Hampshire and New England.
President Trump campaigned on cutting energy prices in half. Reckless tariffs on Canada and Mexico will make those prices higher, not lower.
New Hampshire families shouldn't be punished for what The Wall Street journal has just called, “The Dumbest Trade War in History”.
And that's not all. These tariff taxes will affect groceries because the U.S. imports 38% of our fresh vegetables, 60% of our fresh fruit and more than 99% of the coffee that we drink.
If we take all these together, Americans could be seeing an extra $200 a year on their grocery bills because of the trump tariff taxes.
That doesn’t include the longer term impact of taxes on farm equipment or fertilizer. America imports about 85% of the potash fertilizer we use and much of that comes from Canada.
Now, we already have record-high prices on coffee and eggs, if you can find eggs, some grocery stores are sold out. And one of the things that just happened in the last week is that because of the stop-work order that President Trump put on our services that we provide overseas to track bird flu, we're no longer tracking the bird flu that has helped to drive up the cost of eggs.
So, it could get worse and we're not even going to know about it until we see those prices reflected at the grocery store.
Any new 25% tariff tax on these imports would make our food more expensive when families are already stretching and straining their household budgets.
Tariffs sometimes get talked about as a way to support American manufacturers, but that also misses the mark.
Half of the products the U.S. imports are either raw materials or intermediate components, and that means the parts we make into cars or electronics.
All of these inputs would get more expensive for American manufacturers, which is only going to make it harder for them to compete internationally.
One of the messages I hear regularly from businesses is that uncertainty is one of the hardest things for them to deal with.
One example of this is a call I got two weeks ago from a small business owner in New Hampshire who sells specialized agricultural equipment both in the U.S. and overseas.
This is a family business with five employees. His father founded it 50 years ago, and he reached out specifically because he's worried about what tariffs on the components he buys from Canada could do to his business.
For the specialized equipment that he needs, there aren't a lot of manufacturers out there.
So, he reached out to my office asking if he was going to have to pay $5,000 more in costs for each of the machines he sells.
He took over this business just a couple of years ago and he's been working to invest to modernize it and expand.
Now he has to worry about whether he can try to grow the business, whether he might face new foreign competition or even if he can pay out bonuses or give raises to his employees.
He can't even be certain what kind of pricing schedule he should send out for the year because his costs could go up $5,000 next month.
And last week, I heard from another small business, Granite State Packing. It’s a start-up meat-processing company that’s only two years old.
They started just two years ago, and they already have ten employees.
Last year, they actually got $1.6 million in a grant from USDA to expand their operations. That’s going to allow them to double their workforce.
In order to expand, they placed an order for $500,000 in new equipment because the specialized equipment that they use isn't made in the United States.
Now, depending on how and when these tariffs go into effect, and when their equipment might get delivered, they could be looking at an increased bill for $125,000.
That's going to affect whether they can follow through on the expansion, whether they can actually add the staff they want to add, and they don't have any way of knowing if they're going to face an unexpected $125,000 bill because President Trump and this administration hasn't made up their mind about what they’re going do with these tariffs.
Over the weekend, I had another business owner from C&J bus lines, they run a great bus line from the seacoast of New Hampshire to Boston.
The owner told me that they've ordered seven new buses from Quebec—new buses because they’re made in Quebec—these tariffs would add $150,000 to the cost of each bus.
Now, between that and the higher fuel costs that they would pay, they could be looking at $1.3 million more in added costs this year because of the Trump tariff tax.
No small business can easily just absorb a 25% price increase, nor can they plan on how to grow their business and keep providing good-paying jobs with this kind of uncertainty.
Make no mistake, I'm glad the administration delayed these tariffs. I hope they understand how this action could affect America's small businesses and the impact this would have on the economy.
And let me finally just talk about housing impacts, because New Hampshire has an affordable housing crisis.
These tariffs would make that worse.
Lumber makes up about 15% of building a house, and a lot of building materials, in addition to lumber, are imported.
The National Association of Homebuilders wrote in part, and I quote, “imposing additional tariffs on these imports will ultimately be passed on to home buyers in the form of increased housing prices.”
That means that this 25% tariff tax would directly add to the cost of building a home at a time when too many Granite Staters and too many Americans across the country already can't afford housing.
And we shouldn't pretend that American tariffs are going to go unanswered. Other countries are going to retaliate, and getting into a tit for tat trade war is not going to help working Americans pay their bills.
Families across New Hampshire and America are worried about the high cost of housing, about the cost of groceries, about what it costs to heat their homes.
Business owners are similarly worried about costs or unexpected expenses. I'm hearing regularly from them about the impact of the uncertainty on their ability to grow their businesses because of these tariffs.
President Trump promised during his campaign, and I'm quoting here, “to lower the price of everything,” but instead of doing something to lower costs, what he's doing now, what his administration is doing, is planning to add a 25% tariff tax to countless imports from Canada and Mexico.
And they've already added a 10% tariff tax on goods coming in from China.
And again, while this was delayed at the last minute, this would raise costs for everything from groceries to housing to energy.
It would proportionately hit lower-income families.
I'm glad for the delay. I don't want people to misunderstand that, but how is a business or a family supposed to plan when they don't know if important costs like gas or heating or groceries are going to spike any day?
I want to finish by reading a quote here.
The quote says, “Tariffs are inflationary, and would strengthen the dollar—hardly a good starting point for U.S. Industrial renaissance.”
That's a quote from Scott Bessent, the new Treasury Secretary who just got confirmed, when he wrote to his investors just a year ago.
I happen to agree with what he said then, but unfortunately the administration he just joined seems to be willing to risk more inflation.
These sweeping tariff tax increases would hurt American families, businesses and workers.
I'm glad the taxes on goods from Canada and Mexico were delayed.
I hope this administration can provide everyone with certainty that they won't go into effect next month.
Thank you, Mr. President. I yield to my colleague from Vermont.
Last week, Shaheen led the New Hampshire Congressional Delegation in sending a letter to the White House urging him not to impose tariffs on Canada which are expected to cost the average Granite Stater $1,100 per year.
Earlier this year, Shaheen introduced new legislation with U.S. Senators Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Tim Kaine (D-VA) to shield American businesses and consumers from rising prices imposed by tariffs on imported goods into the United States. The Senators’ legislation would keep costs down for imported goods by limiting the authority of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA)—which allows a President to immediately place unlimited tariffs after declaring a national emergency—while preserving IEEPA’s use for sanctions and other tools.
After the November election, a multitude of business leaders verified that, if the President placed sweeping tariffs as promised, they’d be forced to raise prices on consumers. The CEO of Best Buy said, “the vast majority of that tariff will probably be passed on to the consumer as a price increase.” The CFO of Walmart said, “there will probably be cases where prices will go up for consumers.” The CEO of Columbia Sportswear said, “we’re set to raise prices” and “it’s going to be very, very difficult to keep products affordable.” The CEO of AutoZone said, “if we get tariffs, we will pass those tariff costs back to the consumer.” The President of a Texas-based Lipow Oil Associates said, “The prices at the pump are going to go up.”
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