Kansas Sen. Jerry Moran quietly supports bill to curb Trump’s tariff power | Opinion
It’s probably apocryphal, but Winston Churchill is reputed to have once described Americans as the kind of folks who always do the right thing — but only “once all other possibilities have been exhausted.”
You could probably say the same thing about Sen. Jerry Moran.
The Kansas Republican late last week quietly — very quietly — signed onto bipartisan legislation that would let Congress take back its constitutional power over tariffs from President Donald Trump.
The bill, sponsored by Sens. Maria Cantwell (a Washington Democrat) and Chuck Grassley (an Iowa Republican), would limit the White House’s ability to unilaterally impose tariffs without the legislative branch’s approval. The president would have 48 hours to put any new tariff before Congress, which would then have to give its approval or disapproval.
Without approval, the tariff would automatically end in 60 days.
The reason for all this isn’t difficult to figure out: Trump last week declared an unprovoked trade war against pretty much the entire world (Russia excluded) that has sent stocks plunging, raised the odds of a global recession and put Kansas farmers at risk of failure.
Trump has single-handedly created an economic emergency.
But Moran didn’t initially treat the emergency like an emergency, at least in public.
On Wednesday, he voted against Senate legislation that would have effectively repealed Trump’s earlier-announced tariffs on Canada. He followed that up with a Thursday press release announcing a bill to fund improvements to metropolitan transportation ahead of next year’s World Cup in Kansas City.
To be fair, Moran has long focused on the nuts-and-bolts of small-bore acts of governing while his GOP colleagues wage perpetual hair-on-fire political battles online and on Fox News. But the timing of the soccer bill looked like a real “nothing to see here” move amid extraordinary economic carnage.
On Friday, though, Reuters reported that Moran had signed on as a co-sponsor to the Grassley-Cantwell bill.
On Saturday, Cantwell confirmed it in a press release.
Moran? He didn’t draw attention to himself. There was no press release, no announcement on Facebook or X.
GOP fiddles while economy burns
Moran did give a mildly critical interview about Trump’s tariffs to The Hill on Friday.
“The idea of a tariff to equal the stage has some merit and some support. But I think most Kansans would say, ‘let’s do this in a more gradual way,’” he said. “Most Kansans, including agriculture, which is so affected, I think they were expecting something less dramatic.”
If we’re being charitable, those comments could be called “measured.” “Tepid” might be a better description.
Still, Moran is light-years ahead of his GOP colleagues from Kansas and Missouri, who spent the weekend fiddling furiously while America’s economic house burned down.
“I trust the president,” Sen. Roger Marshall of Kansas told NewsNation. “He proved in Trump 45 that he gave us the best economy that I’ve ever professionally lived in — low unemployment, low inflation.”
Americans “deserve to live meaningful lives with meaningful work,” added Sen. Eric Schmitt of Missouri, in an interview on Fox Business. “They don’t deserve to have all those jobs shipped overseas.”
Politico, meanwhile, reported that Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri said Congress should only intervene to make tariffs higher.
Trump? He spent the weekend golfing.
Could markets, farmers be wrong?
Maybe these guys are right. Maybe the markets — which were still dropping steeply as of Monday morning — are wrong. Maybe the Kansas and Missouri farmers who worry about losing their livelihoods are wrong. And maybe Trump-backing billionaires like Bill Ackman and Jamie Dimon and (checks notes) Elon Musk are wrong.
America and Europe should move “to a zero-tariff situation, effectively creating a free trade zone between Europe and North America,” Musk said over the weekend.
The tariffs “will likely increase inflation and are causing many to consider a greater probability of a recession,” Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, said in a letter to shareholders.
Trump is creating a “self-induced, economic nuclear winter,” Ackman said.
Sounds bad.
If all those folks are right — and if Marshall, Schmitt, Hawley and Trump are wrong — then something must be done quickly to protect Americans and their economy. Moran, in his usual fashion, is trying to do something without getting on the wrong side of MAGA. But at least he’s doing something.
This story was originally published April 7, 2025 at 11:06 AM.