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By Richard Cowan
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Senate on Wednesday passed legislation that would terminate new tariffs on Canada, just hours after President Donald Trump unveiled a raft of duties on foreign goods against countries spanning the globe.
The Senate voted 51-48 to approve the bill and send it to the House of Representatives, where it is likely to be shelved. In a blow to Trump, four Senate Republicans teamed up with Democrats to advance the legislation.
The Democratic-sponsored bill would terminate a national emergency Trump declared on January 22, which he linked to illegal imports of the deadly fentanyl drug from Mexico, Canada and China and used to target Canada with steep new tariffs.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, a Republican, had urged defeat of the bill, arguing that shifting attention away from Canada would be "a step backward."
"Will the cartels simply shift tactics and expand their operations to the north?" he said, adding, "I think we can be confident the answer to that question is yes."
The measure needed at least four Republican votes to pass in the chamber where Trump's party holds a 53-47 majority. In an overnight social media post he urged four fellow Republicans by name to reject the bill: Senators Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul.
They ignored his pressure.
Collins said in a speech to the Senate before the vote that Trump's proposed Canadian tariffs would hurt several industries in her home state of Maine, including its paper makers, which obtain pulp via a pipeline from Canada.
As the debate wore on, Paul also attacked new, steep tariffs on Canada in a Senate speech.
Democratic Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia, the leading sponsor of the tariff-ending bill, noted during debate that the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade deal negotiated during Trump's first term as president "has dispute-resolution mechanisms that would make imposition of tariffs unnecessary."
Public data shows that about 0.2% of all fentanyl seized in the U.S. comes across the Canadian border.
(Reporting by Richard Cowan in Washington; Additional reporting by Bo Erickson in Washington; Editing by Scott Malone, Matthew Lewis and Daniel Wallis)
