Posted on 11/05/2025 8:52:52 PM PST by SeekAndFind
I disagree. If the Court finds the tariff war unconstitutional, I don’t that they’ll make exceptions, nor do I think that they would WANT to appoint themselves arbiters of reasonable vs. unreasonable tariffs.
The key voice yesterday was Gorsuch. He has been reliably conservative but was clearly balked at the administration’s overreach. He indicated that he didn’t believe that the 1977 Emergency Powers Act encompassed ceding to the executive the power to set tariff rates, and for that matter he sounded skeptical that the President could be allowed to set rates EVEN IF CONGRESS TRIED TO DELEGATE THOSE POWERS.
Interestingly, the words “tariff” and “trade” don’t even appear in the 1977 act, so it’s hard seeing that Congress surrendered that responsibility to the President.
On the international stage, they have no authority to cancel a trade deal that was signed by a foreign head of state, or to tell that foreign head of state to ignore parts of the contract that he signed, namely the mutual tariff conditions.
That foreign head of state negotiated terms and conditions based on the understanding that the mutual tariffs were in place. If those mutual tariffs were not a part of the deal, the foreign head of state might not have agreed to other parts of the deal. In fact, it's possible that the foreign country then signed trade deals with a third country based on the trade deal they just made with the United States.
That's what President Trump was trying to accomplish with Europe and Asia; he signed trade deals with countries that were doing business with China, so that they would then replace their China trade with trade from other countries in order to isolate China and put maximum pressure on the Chinese economy.
In effect, our Supreme Court would be acting as a de facto Supreme Court of the foreign country as well, if they tried to tamper with a mutually negotiated and signed bi-lateral international trade deal that then had ripple effects on the foreign country's own economic trade deals.
In my opinion, SCOTUS just doesn't have that kind of authority. Their authority ends at the nation's border. That's why I believe they will try to find a compromise that prevents the President from imposing a unilateral retaliatory tariff, but will have to let stand any tariffs that are a part of a international bi-lateral signed trade deal that includes tariffs.
-PJ
I think they said the truth as they saw it. I happen to see it the same way.
Jamieson Greer speaks on the same issue.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ONFRisOZFI
Can always go back to quotas.
It will be interesting to see how it shakes out. I think the tariffs are in the box of foreign policy not tax. The SC needs to respect the executive branch function and these acts are firmly w//i the President’s powers in foreign policy and dealing with National emergencies.
This video from the White House is cued to start at the President’s comments today during questions after the drug announcements.
https://youtu.be/yFduE6tCLUw?t=751
Roberts would uphold a tax. He loves the. Unconstitutionally changed “penalty” in Obamacare to “tax” from the bench.
Congress gave the authority to the President. 1974 for one.
.58% isn’t falling
I honestly don’t see that trade treaties are tied at the hip to tariffs.
The President can negotiate the former, but the Congress alone can enact the latter.
At least that’s how I think the Court will see it, based on the oral arguments.
And the most ridiculous thing that the Solicitor General said was that the tariff revenues were merely incidental to the President pursuing trade policy. Secretary Bessent has said tariffs would raise $500 billion to $1 trillion [!!!] in revenues, yet they’re not really about the money!
ScROTUS better not f this up.
Tariffs do to great things that all PATRIOTS love; they promote domestic industry and raise revenue. They are a voluntary consumption tax which is another plus.
Being a statist ,you probably love the income tax. Figures.
“ In 1934, Congress passed the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act, which gave President Franklin Roosevelt the ability to change tariffs rates by 50% and negotiate bilateral trade agreements without additional approval from Congress. The Trade Act of 1973 gave proclamation powers to the president to change tariff barriers without congressional approval unless an agreement contains non-tariff barriers.
According to the Congressional Research Service, tariff revenues have seen an increase since the first Trump administration, which nearly doubled revenues from $37 billion to $74 billion annually between 2017 and 2020. Annual tariffs revenues went up to $77 billion during the Biden administration.
Scott Bomboy is the editor in chief of the National Constitution Center.”
And pleez Remember...4 others agreed with Roberts.
Chief Justice John Roberts’s ruling in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius (2012) upheld the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) individual mandate by reinterpreting it as a tax, not a commerce clause mandate. Roberts reasoned that Congress can use its power to tax to influence behavior, and therefore, the “penalty” for not having insurance was a constitutional exercise of this taxing authority
The Supreme Court has the power of "severability," meaning they can strike down a part of a law passed by Congress that they rule to be unconstitutional, because the situation is 100% domestic.
They don't have that power when it comes to international trade deals, because the deals were signed by both the President and a foreign sovereign leader. The Court cannot tell the foreign leader that the deal that he signed is no longer valid, because that leader could turn around and say that his High Court ruled that it IS valid, and now you have a battle of the courts.
At this point, if states believe that the President abused his authority in making the deal that included tariffs, they can impeach him, but the court cannot unwind the American portion of an internation trade deal that a foreign leader signed off on.
-PJ
Nice!
“If Trump loses in court, he should ask Congress to ratify the trade agreements that he negotiated while the tariffs were in effect.”
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There aren’t the votes for ratification of the trade agreements, at least until they are something more than “a framwork” for a future agreement.
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