Ahead of a federal court ruling on Donald Trump’s trade tariffs, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent warned that a legal defeat risked creating a “dangerous diplomatic embarrassment.” Not surprisingly, this did not prove persuasive. NBC News reported:
A federal appeals court said Friday that President Donald Trump had misused his authority when he imposed tariffs under an emergency-powers statute, ruling that only Congress has the power to apply such sweeping measures. … The ruling affects two sets of tariffs Trump has sought to impose. The first are the country-by-country or ‘reciprocal’ tariffs. … It also affects the 25% tariff Trump imposed on some goods from Canada, China and Mexico for what the Trump administration said was a failure on the part of those countries to curb fentanyl flows.
“The core Congressional power to impose taxes such as tariffs is vested exclusively in the legislative branch by the Constitution,” the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled, adding, “Tariffs are a core Congressional power.”
The institutional distinction is important: The appeals court didn’t say that the tariffs themselves are unlawful, but rather that the White House implemented the policy in an unlawful way.
If the president had followed the proper legal process and gone through Congress, the tariffs would’ve easily prevailed.
In the short term, the decision comes with limited practical consequences. As my MSNBC colleague Jordan Rubin explained, “[T]he ruling won’t take immediate effect because the court is giving the administration time to appeal to the Supreme Court. So as with nearly every big issue in American life, the justices may have the last word.”
But in the meantime, it was difficult not to notice the rhetorical hyperbole in Trump’s meltdown after the ruling was issued.
The incumbent president argued online that if the ruling stands it would “literally destroy the United States of America.” In case that was too subtle, the Republican added a couple of days later that without tariffs “our Country would be completely destroyed, and our military power would be instantly obliterated.”
Later in the day, he went on to argue that without his tariffs, “we would become a Third World Nation.”
None of this made any sense. If Friday’s court ruling stands, the country would simply go back to where it was earlier this year. But just as notable is the easy option that’s readily available to the White House. As the editorial board of The Washington Post summarized: Trump has warned that if his power is limited here, it will ‘literally destroy the United States of America.’ If the stakes are that high, he can make the case to the institution that has explicit authority over tariffs: Congress. Tax rates can be changed on a party-line vote. It is telling that the Republican Party’s most dominant figure in a generation is taking his chances at the high court rather than working to win over senators and congressmen who have so far shown nothing but loyalty to this president’s agenda. At least for now, the House and Senate are led by Republican majorities, which have spent the year eagerly doing Trump’s bidding. If the White House is correct and there’s a genuine “emergency” that necessitates an ambitious tariffs agenda, the president can simply make an appeal to his GOP allies on Capitol Hill, who would likely follow his instructions. So why hasn’t this happened? Possibly, Trump and his team have doubts about congressional Republicans’ willingness to go along with an unpopular and ineffective policy, or the White House simply wants to assert institutional dominance, claiming a power the president does not have. If it’s the latter, going to Congress for permission might, from Trump’s perspective, set a bad precedent for an administration that prefers to do as it pleases. To date, the president hasn’t even tried to explain why it doesn’t want to follow the law, even if that would short circuit the legal fight.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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