President Trump, faced with judicial ruling on his tariff program, is warning of dire consequences if a “Radical Left Court” rules against him. The legality of his “Liberation Day” tariffs, reaching up to 50 percent, are being weighed in Washington by a tribunal, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, that hears disputes in trade-related cases. Of the 11 judges on the panel that heard the case in July, eight were nominated by Democrats.
A ruling could come any day. Mr. Trump cautions that if the circuit riders “ruled against us at this late date,” it would be “an attempt to bring down or disturb the largest amount of money, wealth creation and influence the U.S.A. has ever seen.” He adds that it “would be impossible to ever recover, or pay back, these massive sums of money and honor.” He concludes that an adverse ruling would be a disaster on par with the “GREAT DEPRESSION.”
Whether or not that’s the case, a ruling against Mr. Trump’s tariffs could upend what is shaping up to be the president’s signature economic and foreign policy strategy. The import of the question is likely to weigh on the jurists of the circuit court, no matter their partisan affiliation. At the same time, however the circuit panel decides the question, it is not the final word, as the case could be appealed to the court’s full bench, and to the Supreme Court.
Mr. Trump, in remarks Friday on his Truth Social platform, groused that if the courts were going to rule against his tariff regime, the jurists “should have done so LONG AGO, at the beginning of the case.” Yet a tribunal at New York, the Court of International Trade, found in May that Mr. Trump lacked “unbounded authority” to set tariffs, despite a law giving him emergency power to “regulate” trade. The ruling was paused by the circuit court.
The legal — and constitutional — questions in the case are not easy. Harvard Law’s Jack Goldsmith has described the tariff issue as “hard and close.” Some conservative sages, in what the Times described as a “fiery brief,” raised doubts over the president’s ability to set the levies. After all, Congress has the enumerated “power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises.” Yet the legislature has by law ceded much of this authority to the president.
In light of the thorny nature of the dispute, the advice from these columns has been to maintain “one’s constitutional cool.” That said, there was no shortage of heated rhetoric during the circuit court hearing over the tariffs. President Obama’s solicitor general, Neal Katyal, arguing against the levies, averred that Mr. Trump was making a “breathtaking claim to power that no president has asserted in 200 years, and the consequences are staggering.”
The tenor of questioning from the circuit court panelists was by and large skeptical of the position of Mr. Trump’s lawyer, who said that an emergency over trade deficits warranted the president’s actions. One circuit judge on the panel suggested that “the declaration of a national emergency is not a talisman enabling the President to rewrite the tariff schedules” and that for the courts to allow it would sound the “death knell of the Constitution.”
Yet at least one of the judges, Richard Taranto, appeared “sympathetic to the president’s argument,” as our Luke Funk reported. Judge Taranto, an Obama nominee, had in the past clerked for Judge Robert Bork and Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. His questions centered on the harms posed by America’s persistent trade deficits, including damage to defense industries, suggesting one avenue to legally vindicate, on statutory grounds, the tariffs.
The broader debate in the tariffs case is whether Congress can, constitutionally, surrender a core power to the executive. A similar query arises over, say, Congress’ delegation, to the Federal Reserve, of the monetary powers granted in the parchment to the legislature. These questions suggest the kind of interbranch — i.e. political — dispute that the Supreme Court could well decide must be settled by the president and Congress, no matter how the circuit rules.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
