Trump tariffs’ tough time at the Supreme Court
A majority of the Supreme Court justices seemed skeptical Wednesday of President Trump’s authority to impose sweeping tariffs in a series of executive orders this year, says Amy Howe in a SCOTUSblog analysis.
The court’s 6-3 conservative majority has regularly backed Trump on various contentious cases since he returned to office in January, but based on the almost three-hour oral argument, the tariffs dispute could go the other way, says longtime reporter on the court Lawrence Hurley of NBC News.
The legal question is whether a 1977 law called the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which allows the president to regulate imports when there’s an emergency, extends to the power to impose global tariffs of unspecified duration and breadth, says Hurley.
The Constitution says the power to set tariffs is assigned to Congress. IEEPA, which doesn’t specifically mention tariffs, says the president can “regulate” imports and exports when he deems there to be an emergency, which occurs when there’s an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to the nation.
Until Trump returned to office in January, no president had used the law to tariff imports.
During the argument, Chief Justice John Roberts, one of the court’s conservatives, said, “the imposition of taxes on Americans” has always “been the core power of Congress,” a fact that also was mentioned by other justices in their questioning.
“The statute doesn’t use the word tariff,” Roberts said.
Liberal Justice Elena Kagan told Trump’s lawyer, Solicitor General John Sauer: “It has a lot of actions that can be taken under this statute. It just doesn’t have the one you want.”
Meanwhile, The Washington Post reports that “some of the most prominent groups and scholars associated with the conservative movement have sided against Trump in the tariff lawsuit, highlighting how import taxes have emerged as one of the clearest fault lines between the president’s MAGA base and the free-market groups that defined Republican politics before Trump.”
Prominent conservative economists, lawyers and judges have submitted briefs backing the small businesses challenging the tariffs, the Post says. One was signed by 31 former judges appointed by Presidents Reagan and both Bushes. The Chamber of Commerce, which was aligned with the GOP for decades before Trump, also filed a brief supporting the companies, as did the conservative Washington Legal Foundation and experts from groups widely viewed as right of center, including the American Enterprise Institute, the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and the Cato Institute.
On the other side, says the Post, think tanks and legal groups that have played a role in shaping Trump’s policies, including the America First Policy Institute and America First Legal Foundation, have backed the administration’s position. America First Legal Foundation was co-founded by Stephen Miller, who’s now Trump’s deputy chief of staff.
No major companies filed briefs supporting the challenge at the Supreme Court, the Post says. They’ve instead lobbied the president and top administration officials for exceptions to the tariffs, in some cases getting big benefits as a result.
The court is hearing the case on an expedited basis, meaning a ruling could be issued soon, Hurley says.
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