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Democrats promised voters they would end President Donald Trump’s tariffs. The arithmetic says they cannot do it without Republican help.
Democrats won control of both chambers during Tuesday’s midterm elections, winning at least 54 Senate seats and a House majority with dozens of races still uncalled, according to The Center Square reporting. Overriding a presidential veto takes 67 votes in the Senate and 290 in the House. No outcome in the remaining contests gets Democrats there.
U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who is in line to chair the Senate Finance Committee, said he would use the panel to “reassert congressional authority over our country’s trade policy to bring down costs, end Trump’s disastrous and corrupt tariffs, reestablish critical trade partnerships, and hold trade cheats accountable.”
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., who announced his bid for speaker Wednesday, said at a Nov. 4 news conference that Democrats would move early on ending the tariffs. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said the same day that his party’s priority is “reducing costs, ending corruption.” Neither has said what would replace the revenue.
Schumer introduced the End Trump’s Tariff Tax Act, S.5390, on Sept. 14. The bill would terminate and refund duties the president imposed, according to its official title, and Schumer’s office says it covers the Section 301 tariffs on 60 countries, the Section 122 global tariffs and the 50% tariffs on Canadian goods. It has 29 cosponsors, including Wyden. It was referred to the Finance Committee that day and has not moved since.
Net customs duties totaled $173.2 billion in fiscal 2026, according to the Treasury Department’s monthly statement. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonpartisan fiscal watchdog, estimates repealing the remaining tariffs would cost about $85.5 billion a year, or $245 per person. The Congressional Budget Office has not scored the bill, which has never had a committee vote.
The Tax Foundation estimates the tariffs will raise taxes by an average of $820 per household in 2026, using a model dated August 2026. The Budget Lab at Yale put the burden at about $1,100 in an Aug. 24 report. Both are modeled estimates of what households pay, not measures of federal revenue.
Erica York, a senior economist at the Tax Foundation, wrote in an Oct. 7 analysis that repealing all the tariffs imposed since 2017 would cost nearly $1.8 trillion over a decade, and that a broad-based value-added tax of 1% would raise enough to replace it. She wrote that the swap would not significantly change who bears the tax burden, and that it would leave the government $130.1 billion ahead over a decade once economic growth is counted.
Refunds would go to the companies that paid the duties, not to the shoppers who absorbed them in higher prices. That is what happened after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the earlier tariffs in February in Learning Resources Inc. v. Trump. The government collected $317.8 billion in customs duties in fiscal 2026 and returned $144.6 billion to importers, according to the Treasury statement.
Phillip Magness, an economist at the Independent Institute and co-author of a paper tracking the administration’s shifts between tariff statutes, said refunds go to the importing company.
“They are not required to pass them along to consumers, even though consumers incurred the tariff’s incidence from higher prices,” he told The Center Square.
A challenge to the Section 301 tariffs, which USTR says cover 60 economies, is pending before the U.S. Court of International Trade. Magness said the courts remain “the most likely route by which they could be unwound or repealed before the next administration.”
USTR opened a Section 301 investigation into foreign excess manufacturing capacity in March, took public comments through April and held four days of hearings in May. The agency has posted nothing on the docket since, and it could impose new tariffs on top of the ones Democrats want to repeal. USTR did not respond to questions about whether a determination is coming. In October, the agency referred questions about its tariff authorities to the White House.
Jeffries was asked at a Nov. 4 news conference whether the tariff vote would come in the first days or first week, whether he expected Republicans to help against a veto and whether an override was possible.
“We’re going to have a conversation as a caucus upon our return about what the agenda looks like, but we’re going to get out of the gate fast,” he said. He did not address the veto.
Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., the incoming Democratic caucus chair, said at the same news conference that Democrats “will pass a bill to stop the stupid Trump tariffs jacking up prices on Americans.”
Neither Wyden’s office nor Schumer’s answered questions about how they would get past Trump’s veto, or what would replace the revenue.
U.S. Rep. Suzan DelBene, D-Wash., who sits on the Ways and Means trade subcommittee and told The Center Square last month that discussions on how to address the 301 tariffs were “ongoing,” did not respond to follow-up questions this week.
U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., who urged U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer in an Aug. 16 letter to weigh the cost of 50% tariffs on Canadian de-icing salt to Kansas taxpayers, did not respond to questions about whether he wants the tariffs gone, whether the revenue should be replaced, or whether Congress should take back the tariff authority it has delegated.
Congress returns Nov. 9. The new Congress is seated Jan. 3.
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