Month: April 2025

“First, the Constitution gives Congress the authority to tax and impose tariffs. Congress has delegated that authority to the executive branch in a handful of trade laws passed over the course of the last century, but the president’s power in this area is a function of the particular language contained in those statutes. (The likely reason that Trump invoked IEEPA is that, unlike the more commonly invoked trade laws, IEEPA does not require administrative investigations or consultations with Congress.)
Second, the relevant provision of the IEEPA contains a bunch of words, but none of those words is “tariffs” or “taxes.”

Indeed, no president before Trump has ever used the IEEPA to impose tariffs. The law has typically been deployed to impose economic sanctions, such as prohibitions on transactions with designated foreign governments or businesses.

In theory, these facts should resonate with the Republican appointees on the court, who typically hold themselves out as committed textualists, eager to adhere only to the words on the page.

Third, even if the IEEPA granted the president the authority to impose tariffs, there are no actual “emergencies” here that would support them (though we will return to this notion).

The law authorizes the president to act when there is “an unusual and extraordinary threat … to the national security, foreign policy, or economy of the United States,” and the Trump administration has claimed that there are several different emergencies. They include the opioid crisis and illegal immigration, which Trump has invoked to support tariffs against Canada, Mexico and China. To support other global tariffs, Trump has claimed that the country’s “trade deficits” constitute the emergency.

At least as a factual matter, credible independent analysts have generally rejected these claims. Take the country’s trade deficits. “They’re not actually harmful any more than it’s somehow harmful if I have a trade deficit with my local supermarket,” Somin said. “I buy a lot of things from them, but they virtually never buy anything from me.”

Fourth, as the California complaint correctly notes, IEEPA was passed as part of an effort in the 1970s to limit the president’s emergency economic powers. Congress did not intend to expand the president’s powers or to give him carte blanche to overhaul the global trading system.

That fact may not move the Republican appointees on the Supreme Court if the issue gets to them — they generally oppose the use of legislative history in statutory interpretation — but it is likely to prove relevant to the three Democratic appointees.”

…

” The Supreme Court might also side with the Trump administration given that the court is generally deferential to the president’s handling of foreign policy and his assessment of what constitutes a national emergency. We may not have had any national emergencies before Trump returned to office, but ironically, his tariffs may themselves have caused a global emergency — one that could give the justices reason to pause before coming in against the president in a way that could now severely constrain his powers on the global stage and diminish his international diplomatic standing.”

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/04/21/trump-tariffs-supreme-court-legal-arguments-00299467