Lost in almost all of the media coverage of Trump’s tariffs announcement was any clear explanation of his administration’s legal basis for his action (The U.S. Constitution vests the power to lay and collect tariffs with Congress, not the President). When I wrote this morning, I knew it was based in a declaration of some bogus credulity-stretching “emergency” power granted by Congress around 50 years ago, but I got the year wrong (1974, I wrote) and I misrepresented the particular bogus “emergency” (I said it was fentanyl and immigration). Here’s a quote that more accurately pins it down: it’s the “large and persistent U.S. trade deficit”, as if this were new or unexpected. This cannot stand. If the courts allow this plain subterfuge, this total misuse of the law and its intent, it would be head-spinning. The question is how much damage to the economy, to the world, and to our standing in it will the manifest stupidity of these tariffs wreak before they are blocked?
Trump declared a national emergency under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act [IEEPA] to impose the tariffs. That 1977 law gives the president broad authority to regulate imports. He is the only president to use the law to justify raising tariffs, and could draw legal challenges.
White House officials argued Wednesday [“Liberation Day”, the day of Trump’s tariff speech] that the large and persistent U.S. trade deficit, which hit a record $1.2 trillion last year, constitutes a national emergency that is destroying the United States’ manufacturing capability and its defense industrial base.
Show up at a Hands Off protest this Saturday (see my original post from this morning for details).
Keep to the high ground,
Jerry