IEEPA! IEEPA! IEEPA!

Why the tariff ruling really matters

Me watching Trump’s press conference

According to Donald Trump, several Supreme Court justices are FOOLS, “LAPDOGS,” and “very unpatriotic.” I agree — although I think we have different justices in mind.

In his press conference Trump also asserted both that the Court’s ruling against his tariffs was disastrous and that the Court had affirmed his right to do whatever he wants on tariffs. Not sure where the second part came from. The ruling was in fact scathing and said clearly that Trump’s use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act was a usurpation of taxation authority that belongs to Congress:

We are therefore skeptical that in IEEPA — and IEEPA alone — Congress hid a delegation of its birth-right power to tax …

In that press conference Trump announced that he would immediately use another little-known legal route — Section 122 — to impose immediate 10 percent tariffs across the board. Section 122 tariffs can only last 150 days, but he claimed that during that stretch he would find ways to use other authorities to maintain high tariffs. And it’s just possible that this will be enough to keep average tariffs and tariff revenue where they would have been if the Supremes had ruled in his favor.

I don’t see, by the way, how such alternatives would obviate the need to refund the tariffs already collected. If you seized money without constitutional authority, finding other revenue sources going forward doesn’t make the original seizure legal.

And even if Trump finds ways to keep tariffing, this is a huge defeat. Why? Because Trump’s invocation of IEEPA wasn’t about average tariff rates, or revenue. It wasn’t even about the trade deficit, which, by the way, hasn’t declined at all since he went on his tariff spree.

No, it was all about arbitrary power. Trump has reveled in being able to slap tariffs on Brazil for daring to put Jair Bolsonaro on trial for a failed insurrection, being able to threaten France and Germany with tariffs for getting in the way of his attempt to seize Greenland, and of course giving tariff waivers to businesses that help him build his ballroom.

The desire for that arbitrary power is why he went for IEEPA despite warnings that it might well be ruled unconstitutional.

And alternatives to IEEPA don’t give him that much arbitrary power.

No wonder, then, that he’s throwing a huge temper tantrum.