Americans are unhappy with the direction the country is headed and are ready for change. That was the core message from the stunning defeat of the president's party in the midterm elections in November, where the accumulation of unpopular policies—including immigration enforcement, the war in Iran, and tariffs—was thoroughly rebuked. The contribution of those policies to dissatisfaction with the economy is quite clear, and voters expect the incoming Congress to come prepared to tackle them.
Congress may want to start with trade policy. An NBC News exit poll from 45 states showed that 66 percent of voters thought President Donald Trump's tariffs had hurt the national economy. With the tariffs' impact being felt by both businesses and consumers, trade policy is an area ripe for reform.
Ending Trump's second-term trade war is also about a lot more than economic costs because the administration has been indiscriminate in targeting allies and adversaries alike. He has focused substantial attention on Canada, which a majority of Americans see as misguided. Congress should be equally concerned that Canadians are more likely to view the US with suspicion, or as an enemy or potential threat than as a friend.
Reining in the powers that Congress has delegated to the president in the past will not be an easy task politically. Nor will allies suddenly trust the US again even if tariffs are scaled back. Nonetheless, establishing guardrails and repairing alliances are important, and as set out below, there are several ways to do it.
We've Been Here Before
Since Trump's first-term trade war was launched, Congress has debated what kinds of guardrails are necessary to prevent executive abuse of trade authorities. Importantly, while he has used many tools in his battles, some are more harmful than others. Two measures the president uses to avoid accountability are Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, used to impose the "national security" sectoral tariffs, and Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, which is propping up baseline tariffs of 10-12 percent on nearly all US imports. While addressing other tariff abuses is important, reducing the economic harm at home and repairing our relationships with allies such as Canada require Congress to close the loopholes in these two statutes.
Since 2018, lawmakers have discussed a range of bills to address different trade statutes and varying concerns with how they are used. Most of those efforts fall within three categories of reforms: limiting executive abuse, improving transparency and procedural concerns, and clarifying the purpose and scope of specific statutes.
The surefire way to prevent executive abuse is to require that Congress vote on any tariffs. This can take two forms. The first is through a joint resolution of disapproval, where both houses of Congress would be able to vote to repeal a president's tariffs. Currently, Section 232 includes a disapproval resolution only for petroleum imports. Senator Rob Portman (R-OH) put forward a bill in 2019 (the Trade Security Act) that would expand this to all Section 232 actions. The main problem with disapproval resolutions is that they require Congress to seek repeal of a president's action after it has been taken. Politically, this can be difficult because the president's party may want to avoid openly questioning the president's policy agenda. Some members of Congress may also shy away from voting to repeal actions benefiting some interests in their districts. However, voters' overwhelmingly anti-tariff sentiment could insulate those members from such pressures.
The second, and more robust, option is a joint resolution of approval, which requires Congress to vote on a proposed tariff action before it is taken. This prevents arbitrary imposition of tariffs and ensures that such serious actions are thoughtfully deliberated. A 2019 bill—the Bicameral Congressional Trade Authority Act—from Senators Pat Toomey (R-PA) and Mark Warner (D-VA) would have required an approval resolution within 60 days of the president submitting a report to Congress on the proposed action. A 2025 bill—the Trade Review Act—by Senators Maria Cantwell (D-WA) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA) would limit new or increased tariffs to 60 days and require a joint resolution of approval to extend them. The bill also would enable Congress to end tariffs at any time through a disapproval resolution. Both approval and disapproval resolutions would be subject to a presidential veto, requiring a two-thirds majority vote of support in both houses to override. The bar would be very high to clear but not impossible.
Another way to limit executive abuse is to narrow the discretion the president has to act. For example, in past Section 232 reform bills, Congress has suggested that the Department of Defense be designated as the appropriate agency to investigate whether a certain product is "being imported into the United States in such quantities or under such circumstances as to threaten to impair national security." Currently, the statute designates the Secretary of Commerce to fulfill that role. Moving this investigative power to the Department of Defense could help ensure that only legitimate national security concerns are being addressed.
Similarly, with Section 301, some have suggested that the investigation conducted by the US Trade Representative (USTR), who is a political appointee reporting directly to the president, be moved to an independent agency, such as the US International Trade Commission (USITC). This would not only limit the USTR's broad discretion but also ensure that the investigation is data-driven and nonpartisan. A 2023 bill—the Global Trade Accountability Act—from Representative Warren Davidson (R-OH) would require the USITC to analyze the impact of some unilateral trade actions on the US economy.
In addition to building backstops to capricious presidential actions, there are other ways Congress could improve transparency in presidential tariff actions and strengthen procedural guardrails. For example, Section 232 could be made subject to judicial review that involves greater scrutiny than currently exists, so that court challenges can be seriously considered instead of avoided due to traditional deference to the president on issues relating to national security. The president could also be required to publish or share with Congress the Section 232 reports received from the Secretary of Commerce that are used to make determinations about tariff actions. The first Trump administration's Section 232 investigation on automobiles was released by the Biden administration, for instance. In the second Trump administration, these reports have not been made public, which makes it difficult to assess the rationale behind the actions.
How and why certain products are excluded from tariffs is also a topic Congress may want to address. In 2023, the Government Accountability Office critically assessed problems in the Section 232 exclusions process, including the grant of unneeded exclusions. Section 301 does not include a means to grant exclusions, but under the first Trump administration, hundreds of products were exempted from tariffs in an opaque process. Congress could clarify that exclusions cannot be granted or specify when exclusions would be acceptable (e.g., consumer products, energy, trade agreement partners).
Finally, Congress will need to weigh in on the purpose and scope of these statutes. For example, Congress could define what specific national security threats could warrant tariff actions. For example, the Toomey-Warner bill defined national security as "the protection of the United States from foreign aggression; and does not otherwise include the protection of the general welfare of the United States." Congress could also specify where tariffs cannot be applied for national security reasons, such as products where there are no obvious national security applications (e.g., kitchen cabinets and other consumer products, such as groceries), towards specific countries that are part of the US defense-industrial base, or security allies.
Such reforms should entail serious reflection about why Congress delegated certain authorities to the president in the first place, and to what end. For example, the primary purpose of Section 301, when it was drafted, was to support the ability of the president to negotiate agreements to reduce foreign trade barriers, rather than to raise US trade barriers. It was, by and large, an investigation-driven enforcement tool to use as leverage in negotiations with a single country. Today, its application is far removed from that intent. This is one reason why trade experts, including Alan Wolff, the author of the original 301 statute, have been skeptical about the Trump administration's use of Section 301 to impose tariffs allegedly to combat forced labor.
This Time Is Different
The congressional efforts at tariff reform described above suggest that Congress has already put a lot of thought into the persistent problem of executive overreach on trade but has achieved little in terms of concrete outcomes. Political obstacles to action are a main driver of this impasse, but the 2026 midterm election results may have changed past calculations. For one, tariffs are widely unpopular, and Democrats spent billions of dollars on TV ads that portrayed tariffs in a negative light. As Democrats take control of both the House and Senate in January, voters are likely expecting the new Congress to deliver on promises to claw back tariffs as one way to lower consumer costs.
Furthermore, Trump's second-term trade war has targeted the whole world, even close US allies such as Canada, and free trade agreement partners such as South Korea. Congress may want to consider Canada-specific legislation, or reforms that prevent the application of tariffs on certain countries entirely. Senator Christopher Coons (D-DE) introduced the Stopping Tariffs on Allies and Bolstering Legislative Exercise of Trade Policy Act in 2025, which would limit the president's ability to apply tariffs to members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and major non-NATO allies as well as US free trade agreement partners. However, allies may need more than targeted tariff exemptions to restore trust in the US, when multilateral trade rules and free trade agreements approved by Congress have been violated. Congress may also struggle to build consensus to remove tariffs on all allies, keeping some leverage in place to extract additional concessions.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries—on track to become House Speaker in January—has stated that rolling back Trump's tariffs will be a top priority for Democrats in the next Congress, but he has not specified which tariffs or trade statutes his party will take on. There may be some "low-hanging fruit," such as the authority under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 used by Trump to impose tariffs allegedly to address a US balance of payments problem (tariffs struck down by the US Court of International Trade, although the case is on appeal). Another is the antidiscrimination authority in Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930 (used against Canada). But tackling these measures will not go far enough in reclaiming trade authorities that Congress has delegated to the president.
Section 338 is also being challenged in court, and Trump's tariffs under that statute could be invalidated. For Canada, those tariffs are also not as economically significant as the Section 232 sectoral tariffs, over which negotiations broke down in August. Therefore, Congress will need to develop a comprehensive reform agenda for the two core statutes that have made the trade wars persist since 2018. Anything less will do little to reduce the uncertainty that has plagued US economic relations since Trump ratcheted up his trade war last year.
Of course, for any legislative action to be successful, a veto-proof majority will be required. That may exist for Canada-specific tariff relief but not for broader efforts. However, Congress may still want to vote on legislation regardless of its probability of passage if only to get members on the record for their views on tariffs. As a matter of internal party politics and positioning for the next election, this may prove useful in identifying those members who are serious about tackling this aspect of affordability from those who are not. The incoming Congress may not be able to achieve comprehensive tariff reform due to internal party pressures and special interest lobbying for continued protectionism. However, the debates that unfold over the next two years can lay important groundwork for the next president and Congress to finally restore checks and balances in trade policy and ensure, as James Madison wrote in Federalist 45, that the powers of the federal government are few and defined.
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