Trump Responds to the Supreme Court Ruling Overruling His Illegal Tariffs by Imposing More Illegal Tariffs

As predicted, the Supreme Court ruled to strike down tariffs Donald Trump imposed illegally under an “emergency” statute that did not, in fact, grant him a taxing power the Constitution reserves for Congress. Trump responded by declaring that he would impose new tariffs under a different emergency measure. But these tariffs are no more legal than the old ones.

CBS News explains:

Section 122 authorizes the U.S. president to impose tariffs to rectify what the statute describes as “large and serious United States balance-of-payments deficits.” …

But trade and legal experts said Section 122 might not apply in the current context because the large U.S. trade deficit, which Mr. Trump has invoked to justify tariffs, does not qualify as a balance-of-payments deficit. …

“Section 122 is for a balance of payments crisis, which is when you don’t have enough foreign reserves to pay external debts,” Philip Luck, director of the economics program at the nonpartisan Center for Strategic and International Studies. “The U.S. has a very large trade deficit, but so long as we can continue to sell assets to the global market, we have no challenge conducting international trade.”

Trump’s strategy is obvious. He wants to do something illegal and unconstitutional, so when the courts strike down one legal rationale for doing it, he switches to another bogus rationale—but keeps the illegal policy, daring the courts to stop him again. The only constant is his contempt for legality and constitutionality as such.

The Executive Watch is a project of the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, and its flagship publication The UnPopulist, to track in an ongoing way the abuses of the power of the American presidency. It sorts these abuses into five categories: Personal Grift, Political Corruption, Presidential Retribution, Power Consolidation, and Policy Illegality. Click the category of interest to get an overview of all the abuses under it.

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