President Trump’s whipsawing tariff policy has prompted bipartisan alarm on Capitol Hill, where Democrats are outraged and Republicans are caught between their deep opposition to tariffs and fear of criticizing Mr. Trump.
The president’s abrupt announcement on Wednesday that he would halt most of his reciprocal tariffs for 90 days just a week after announcing them allayed the immediate concerns of some G.O.P. lawmakers, many of whom rushed to praise Mr. Trump for what they characterized as deal-making mastery.
But behind those statements was a deep well of nervousness among Republican lawmakers who are hearing angst from their constituents and donors about the impact of Mr. Trump’s trade moves on the financial markets and the economy. Some of them have begun signing onto measures that would end the tariffs altogether or claw back Congress’s power to block the president from imposing such levies in the future.
“I’m just trying to figure out whose throat I get to choke if it’s wrong, and who I put up on a platform and thank them for the novel approach that was successful if they’re right,” Senator Thom Tillis, Republican of North Carolina, said of the sweeping tariffs on Tuesday during a hearing with Jamieson Greer, the Trump administration’s top trade official.
On Wednesday, after Mr. Trump pulled back most of the tariffs but retained a 10 percent tariff rate for most countries and announced additional penalties on China, Mr. Tillis still sounded anxious. He said the move was likely to “reduce some of the escalation,” but added that there was still considerable work to be done to prevent another market meltdown.
“We’ve got to get a deal before we get rid of uncertainty,” he told reporters soon after Mr. Trump announced the change in a social media post.
Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, who has been among the most outspoken Republican critics of Mr. Trump’s tariffs, said he hoped the turnabout was a sign that someone was “talking some sense into the policy and being less extreme.”
“When you add a bunch of tariffs, you’ll lose $6 trillion in the marketplace,” Mr. Paul said on Wednesday. “When you get rid of the tariffs, guess what? It comes bounding back. Tariffs are perceived by millions of people as being bad for the economy, so I hope there’s a lesson learned.”
Mr. Paul has joined Democrats in cosponsoring resolutions that would end Mr. Trump’s tariffs, including one that passed the Senate last week to terminate the levies on Canada, which drew the support of three other Republicans.
In the House, Republican leaders have rushed to stymie such measures and insulate themselves from having to vote on the issue, at least until the fall. The maneuvers are a tacit acknowledgment that such votes would pose an impossible political dilemma: reject the tariffs and earn Mr. Trump’s ire or embrace them and risk the anger of their constituents.
For now, many of them are cheering Mr. Trump’s tariff pause.
“Behold the ‘Art of the Deal,’” Speaker Mike Johnson said in a statement lauding the president’s strategy. “President Trump has created leverage, brought many countries to the table and will deliver for American workers, American manufacturers and America’s future!”
If it was the plan all along, Republicans in Congress were kept in the dark. And despite the temporary reprieve, trade hearings on Capitol Hill this week demonstrated a degree of skepticism in the G.O.P. ranks that seemed unlikely to disappear.
During Tuesday’s hearing, Senator James Lankford, Republican of Oklahoma, who has opposed tariffs in the past and voted in favor of giving Congress more authority over tariffs during Mr. Trump’s first term, chided Mr. Greer for failing to outline a clear strategy for Mr. Trump’s levies, including how long they would remain in place.
“Everyone that I talked to is grateful that we’re actually attacking the trade deficit issue and trying to be able to bring down barriers to trade,” Mr. Lankford said. “They also want to get a timeline.”
A day later, Mr. Greer had been speaking with lawmakers in the House for several hours as markets continued to plummet when Mr. Trump announced his 90-day tariff pause.
Mr. Lankford said the shift would provide “tremendous” help to businesses in the short term, but suggested that the uncertainty would return soon after the initial relief faded.
“Obviously, three months from now there are still going to be some of these questions out there,” he said on Wednesday.
The skepticism reflects a fundamental disconnect between Mr. Trump and many Republican members of Congress who have spent decades promoting free trade and pushing back against the use of tariffs as a tool to promote effective trade relationships.
“I love President Trump — I’m his strongest supporter in the Senate,” Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, said on a podcast last week. “But here’s one thing to understand: A tariff is a tax, and it is a tax principally on American consumers.”
A group of Republican senators vented their concerns about the tariffs in an interview on Tuesday night on Sean Hannity’s program on Fox News, which Mr. Trump is known to watch routinely. And some are doing more than criticizing.
Last week, Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, introduced legislation with Senator Maria Cantwell, Democrat of Washington, that would require the president to give Congress 48 hours’ notice of any new tariffs and require House and Senate approval within 60 days or they would automatically be canceled. A half-dozen Republican senators have signed on.
Even some Republican leaders have carefully calibrated their responses, deferring to Mr. Trump while making it clear they have concerns.
“There are a lot of very intricate trading relationships that exist today across the world,” said Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota and the majority leader, who has long praised trade deals that have resulted in lower tariffs that benefit farmers in his home state. “Ultimately, we don’t know what the economic impacts are going to be. We hope that the president is successful. And if he is and he gets some reciprocity from other countries around the world, you know this may all be temporary.”
With House Republicans shutting down any move to force a vote on Mr. Trump’s tariffs, it is unlikely that Congress will make any serious move to rein in his trade policies.
Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin, said Congress should reclaim its trade authority from the executive branch, but there was little chance of doing so given Mr. Trump’s inevitable veto and the lack of a two-thirds majority in each chamber to override it.
“I can’t really do anything about it now, so I want to give him the benefit of the doubt,” Mr. Johnson said of the president. “I’m hoping he succeeds. I’m not betting against him.”