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The Trump administration’s tariffs are harming US national security interests and potentially running afoul of US commitments to NATO, the top Democrats on three Senate national security committees warned in a letter to the White House.
The Democrats wrote that the tariffs — specifically, the 10% baseline tariffs on most countries — undermine US efforts to get allies to spend more on defense and to unite against China’s aggression and expansionism in the Pacific.
“Strategic competition with” China “will be far harder to win alone,” the Democrats write in the letter to President Donald Trump, citing the collective response to Russia’s Ukraine war as evidence the US and its allies “are stronger together. And launching a trade war against our allies and partners undermines that strength.”
The White House dismissed the concerns.
“Two things can be accomplished at the same time: maintaining our alliances while asking our trading partners to compete on a level playing field,” White House spokesman Kush Desai told Semafor. “The Trump administration is committed to rectifying decades of foolish policymaking that put Americans and America Last.”
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The letter, dated Thursday and shared first with Semafor, is signed by Sens. Jeanne Shaheen, Mark Warner, and Jack Reed — the top Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations, Intelligence, and Armed Services committees, respectively.
The senators said the administration failed to lay out clear goals for its tariff talks, while arguing that Trump’s decision to delay the higher, targeted tariffs on some nations and negotiate represented a “positive step.”
Desai said Trump’s goal is to remove tariffs and trade barriers “that have decimated American industries and undermined American workers,” and that Democrats’ charge that Trump’s goals are vague is “only revealing their ignorance.”
In their letter, the Democrats also raised the possibility that the tariffs violate Article 2 of the NATO treaty, in which alliance members commit that they “will seek to eliminate conflict in their international economic policies and will encourage economic collaboration between any or all of them.” The senators asked the administration to explain how the tariffs comport with US treaty commitments.
NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte has denied that the tariffs violate NATO’s commitments.