The president who shouted tariffs: Will the US Supreme Court challenge Trump’s trade war? | Trump’s definitions

Donald Trump thrives in emergencies. He created chaos on the first day of his second term, declaring a national emergency caused by an “invasion”Illegal aliens“From Mexico. Since then, Trump has used states of emergency more than any other president since the National Emergencies Act was passed in 1976.

Next Wednesday, Trump will face another case of his own making, as the US Supreme Court hears oral arguments on whether his signature world-shaking economic policy – ​​tariffs – are legally valid.

Trump sees emergency everywhere. From the flow of illicit drugs and their precursors Mexico, China In one way or another, Canada; the International Criminal CourtInvestigation of US and Israeli officials; The United States is “not enough.” Energy productiontransportation, refining and generation”; Brazilian governmenther struggle with the social media platform X and her trial of former President Jair Bolsonaro; Crime in Washington DC; And the United States for a long time trade deficit.

The emergencies have served Trump in securing funding to build a border wall, giving him military responsibility for border enforcement, allowing oil drilling on federal lands and keeping unprofitable coal plants running, and deploying the National Guard to Washington, D.C. Of course, to impose tariffs.

Now, the Supreme Court is set to hear some of these matters, in… condition It was filed by dozens of states challenging Trump’s claim that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) of 1977 gives the president the authority to impose tariffs on imports from every country in the world to defend the nation from Trump’s fictional list of supposed threats to the nation.

The justices will focus much of their attention on whether the IEEPA authorizes the president to do so impose a tariff – A word not found in the text of the law, which is, moreover, a form of taxation, over which Congress has exclusive power under the Constitution. But the court should not lose sight of the broader threat to the country’s constitutional democracy: Trump’s abuse of the idea of ​​a national emergency to give himself absolute power to rule without restrictions from anyone.

IEEPA The president gives “The authority to address any extraordinary or extraordinary threat, originating wholly or substantially outside the United States, to the national security, foreign policy, or economy of the United States, if the President declares a national emergency with respect to such threat.”

However, as plaintiffs point out, by using this “to impose massive and ever-changing tariffs on any goods entering the United States he chooses, for whatever reason he finds appropriate to declare a state of emergency, the President has turned the constitutional order upside down and brought chaos to the American economy.” Instead of resolving national emergencies, Trump is using emergency powers to manufacture such emergencies.

Consider the trade deficit, which occupies an unusually dark place in Trump’s imagination – not the result of voluntary, mutually beneficial exchanges between American and foreign companies and consumers, but the result of a twisted global system in which deceitful foreign nations exploit the United States.

Whatever it is, it is not exceptional or unusual. The United States started running Persistent trade deficit Half a century ago, in 1975, fueled by declining savings in the United States and a huge government budget. Budget deficitThis requires withdrawing capital from abroad and thus enhancing demand for foreign goods and services.

Unauthorized immigration, which was Grow for a whileIt also fails to meet the “exceptional” and “extraordinary” standards, fueled by American employers’ long-standing demand for foreign workers. Even if that happened, imposing tariffs on Mexican goods would do little to solve the problem. The damage to the Mexican economy would likely encourage Mexicans to look for jobs north of the border.

I can’t understand how a Canadian TV ad featuring clips of Ronald Reagan warning of the high cost of tariffs and extolling the virtues of free trade amounts to an emergency justifying the added 10% tariff with which Trump responded to Ottawa last Monday. (The White House did not specify what authority the United States uses to impose these tariffs.) In this regard, tariffs on goods imported legally from Mexico or Canada cannot end the “emergency” created by drug cartels’ illegal drug shipments to the United States. Nor can it reduce Americans’ addiction to fentanyl.

Trump’s erratic deployment of tariffs raises a new set of problems. Inflation has remained relatively low – largely because importers anticipate tariffs and stockpile imports in advance – but prices of intermediate inputs and consumer goods have begun to rise, weakening the competitiveness of US exporters. Most economists expect an inflation shock to occur soon.

More importantly, Trump’s trade war is heating up.

In the following months, the financial turmoil caused by the tariff barrage he unleashed on Liberation Day in April subsided. However, the global economy remains close to the brink: earlier this month, Beijing signaled that it was prepared to withdraw the nuclear option in its standoff with Washington, and imposed strict controls on exports of rare earths and other minerals whose supplies it has a near monopoly on, and which are indispensable to defense industries and the entire modern economy.

At a meeting on Thursday on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in South Korea, Presidents Xi Jinping and Trump agreed to a one-year truce, under which China will suspend its latest rare earth export controls and the United States will ease its limits on technology exports to Chinese companies, among other concessions. But the odds that Trump’s trade war without any input from Congress will turn out to be very bad for the US economy and national security are slim. The Supreme Court may take note.

The trade war is unlikely to end even if the court bars Trump from using IEEPA. There are other laws that he can rely on. Section 201 of the Trade Act allows the president to impose tariffs or other restrictions if imports cause or threaten “serious injury” to a domestic industry. Section 301 also allows the president to impose fees to respond to unfair trade practices by another country.

But laws come with limits. Before retaliating under Section 301, for example, the USTR must conduct an investigation, consult with the country concerned and publish the proposed action and the factual findings on which it is based. If it does not stop the trade war, these restrictions may slow it down.

It is crucial that the Supreme Court, by placing some limits on Trump’s brutal aggression, can send the message that crying wolf – or “national emergency”! -Does not provide blanket cover for the president to play harshly with the checks and balances necessary for liberal democracy.