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Posted on 02/21/2026 8:31:23 PM PST by SeekAndFind
As was true for many conservatives, when I saw the headline saying that the Supreme Court had reversed Trump’s tariffs, I admit that my stomach sank. My first thought was that this was an epic disaster for the Trump administration. More than that, I thought that this is an epic disaster for the strong Trump economy, because tariffs have been a major leg of that stool.
Then I took a deep breath and had a couple of useful thoughts. My first thought was, I bet Trump has a backup plan, because he’s always known that this could happen. He’s not the kind of guy to see a known risk and sit there sucking his thumb.
It turns out that I was right. Without missing a beat, the administration pivoted to other tariff powers in the executive arsenal.
As Justice Kavanaugh wrote in his dissent, while the Supreme Court now claims that Trump erred by using his powers under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (a conclusion, by the way, that I believe represents judicial overreach), the fact remains that Congress has still granted the president broad tariff authority:
Although I firmly disagree with the Court’s holding today, the decision might not substantially constrain a President’s ability to order tariffs going forward. That is because numerous other federal statutes authorize the President to impose tariffs and might justify most (if not all) of the tariffs at issue in this case—albeit perhaps with a few additional procedural steps that IEEPA, as an emergency statute, does not require. Those statutes include, for example, the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 (Section 232); the Trade Act of 1974 (Sections 122, 201, and 301); and the Tariff Act of 1930 (Section 338).
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
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- President Trump is invoking his authority under section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, which empowers the President to address certain fundamental international payment problems through surcharges and other special import restrictions.
- By taking this action, the United States can stem the outflow of its dollars to foreign producers and incentivize the return of domestic production. By increasing its domestic production, the United States can correct its balance-of-payments deficit, while also creating good paying jobs, and lowering costs for consumers.
- The Proclamation imposes, for a period of 150 days, a 10% ad valorem import duty on articles imported into the United States.
- The temporary import duty will take effect February 24 at 12:01 a.m. eastern standard time.
Trump excluded from the order only those goods that are necessary to meet America’s critical national security, transportation, food, health needs, etc.
Trump gets a paper cut, and Liberals think it’s a fatal wound.
This decision also prevents future Presidents from abusing the IEEPA like Obama did.
For President Trump to question the loyalty of the Court majority indicates that the loss is sort of a big deal to him, contrary to what I read above.
Section 122 was written in the wake of the repeal of the gold standard. Its purpose was to prevent trade disruption to currency volatility.
The focus is on balance of payments, NOT balance of trade.
In the 52 years since it enactment, the concern which brought about it creation has never obtained: the US dollar remains sound and is still the global reserve currency.
To utilize it now for the first time will be treated by courts as a naked ploy to replicate the tariff taxes that the Supreme Court just disallowed.
I’d expect an injunction by a District Court within weeks and for the Supreme Court to give the case an expedited review. It’ll fail again for the same reason the government lost Learning Resources v. Trump: (a) the condition of utilizing the Trade Act is not met, and (b) it’s still the same damned tax that was disallowed before.
Here’s the big problem, even if I’m wrong about everything above:
Since the Court disallowed the Liberation Day tariffs collected (I’m seeing the number to be anywhere between $130 billion and $290 billion,) that sum has to be returned by Treasury to the parties who paid. (My wife got stuck with a $14 duty on yarn she bought from a Danish catalogue, for example.)
So if the clock starts running again, the improperly garnished duties are still owed to importers.
________________________________________
Here’s how the section begins, by the way:
SEC. 122. BALANCE-OF-PAYMENTS AUTHORITY.
(a) Whenever fundamental international payments problems require special import measures to restrict imports—
(1) to deal with large and serious United States balance-of-payments deficits,
(2) to prevent an imminent and significant depreciation of the dollar in foreign exchange markets, or
(3) to cooperate with other countries in correcting an international balance-of-payments disequilibrium,
The media is all tariffs while WW3 is about to start in the Persian Gulf.
Just amazing 🤩.
I prefer a “loss” on IEEPA and a win on the 14th Amendment citizenship decision. They aren’t connected but I gladly make that trade.
Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, ACB for the win on the 14th!
“This decision also prevents future Presidents from abusing the IEEPA like Obama did.”
But surely, the supreme court halted Obama’s abuse, did it not?
Nagger trash.
The court concluded you are not allow to use a snowblower you must use a shovel. Congress is useless. All they are doing is tying the Presidents hands. I hope he goes through with the total bans, licenses and embargo’s that he alluded too. That would be satisfying.
ACB will not do that. Think of the children
Hahah, you’re not getting your $14 back. Even if every penny were to be returned it’s still creating enough uncertainty and companies have already started going big on cap ex in country as a result. Uncertainty is a key feature and as long as Trump is President he’s going to make sure that it’s substantially easier and more cost effective to build in the US so cry some more. His policy has been widely successful and instead of admitting that they missed something or God forbid learned something people are still claiming that you can’t get avocados fo less than $45 a pound 🤣
In September 2009, Obama approved a special safeguard measure (under Section 421 of the Trade Act of 1974) that added extra duties on imports of certain new pneumatic rubber tires from China used on cars and on-the-highway light trucks, vans, and SUVs.
This took effect starting September 26, 2009, for a three-year period with declining rates: an additional 35% in the first year, 30% in the second, and 25% in the third (on top of the existing ~4% baseline tariff).
This action followed a U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC) finding that surging Chinese tire imports were causing market disruption to the U.S. tire industry, leading to job losses and plant closures. It was the first use of this China-specific safeguard provision.
I worry about ACB. Even though he appointed her, I get the feeling she despises Trump.
The Proclamation imposes, for a period of 150 days, a 10% ad valorem import duty on articles imported into the United States.
Trump's tariffs were to create leverage. Nothing creates leverage like a tariff of not more than 15%, for a duration of not more that 150 days, extendable only by a law passed by Congress.
Trade Act of 1974, Sec 122https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/COMPS-10384/pdf/COMPS-10384.pdf
SEC. 122. BALANCE-OF-PAYMENTS AUTHORITY.
(a) Whenever fundamental international payments problems require special import measures to restrict imports—
(1) to deal with large and serious United States balance-of-payments deficits,
(2) to prevent an imminent and significant depreciation of the dollar in foreign exchange markets, or
(3) to cooperate with other countries in correcting an international balance-of-payments disequilibrium,
the President shall proclaim, for a period not exceeding 150 days(unless such period is extended by Act of Congress)—
(A) a temporary import surcharge, not to exceed 15 percent ad valorem, in the form of duties (in addition to those already imposed, if any) on articles imported into the United States;
[...]
That is because the entire rescue plan was based not on austerity but purely on growth. That is, the gaping annual deficit had grown long enough to bring the country to the point where we potentially faced a sovereign debt crisis. This is illustrated by the fact that service of the debt now runs in excess of 120% of GDP. Another flashing warning signal is the fact that interest on the national debt annually costs more than national defense.
Let us put this into context: upon assuming office for the second time, Trump was confronted with a daunting task, how to maintain the economy so that the national and international bond market would continue to invest in America. That meant bringing the deficit under control if not eliminating it entirely.
Deficit control, Trump knew, could be attained by austerity or growth or a combination of the two. Trump also knew equally well that decades of these deficits had been accumulated because austerity is political poison. So austerity is not voted for by the public nor tolerated by their elected representatives.
During these decades, politicians have learned that the United States uniquely enjoyed an almost infinitely durable option to borrow and therefore to borrow and spend. This unique position existed in the decades after World War II because America was the dominant military power, the dominant economy, possessed of the world's best capital formation institutions, the world's reserve currency, and a politically stable land that operates under the rule of law. These enviable advantages meant the world's lenders would tolerate a growing national debt and attractive interest rates.
So politicians borrowed against the future and spent for the next election, while the music played on.
But the music will not play on for much longer. Somewhere on the medium-term or even short-term horizon, an auction at the bond market window will fail and the economy will crash. In fact, we have already seen evidence of this threat when the president broadly applied tariffs after Liberation Day and bond prices spiked until Secretary Bissant convinced the president to back down on the tariffs.
Yet tariffs were seen as the key to growth, and growth the key to survival. The president often cites the revenues garnered from tariffs, but that is but the smallest part of the formula. The still existing and available tariffs that the president is now immediately invoking will to some degree contribute to closing that deficit, but they will have little impact on growth.
They will not be targeted enough to bludgeon nations and foreign companies into investing accumulated trillions of dollars in American manufacturing to avoid paying tariffs. Trump has touted trillions and trillions of foreign investments, done in response to his secularized tariffs, as the ignition that will fire up the economy and grow our way to prosperity. 15% tariffs across the board, of dubious constitutional legitimacy, that are not targeted, are unlikely to substitute for the lost tariffs as the means to energize the economy and American productive capacity.
It is not clear what new tariffs the president will be able to enact short-term, and it is even more unclear what tariffs a broken Congress will authorize him to impose, if any, especially after the next midterm election. In the absence of this power, the president will have lost his power to work a national economic policy. He intended to use tariffs as national policy to restore manufacturing and manufacturing jobs to America. This is beyond using tariffs as a remedy to unfair regulations or predatory tariffs; this national economic policy is designed to restructure targeted vital sectors of the American economy.
Those of us who early warned that the Supreme Court might upend our national tariff policy to save the economy by correcting deficits and restoring America's position as a mercantile and dominant world trading partner, remain unclear about the next step forward.
Was it ever challenged? If memory serves, republicans didn't object to much of what obamaslime did.
And some of us knew many months ago that this tariff decision was almost a certainty. In my case, I’m genuinely surprised that it wasn’t a 9-0 decision. I’m still scratching my head trying to figure out how “constitutional originalists” like Thomas and Alito came down on the side of a tariff policy that directly contradicts Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution.
Not surprising. It is a pattern for Roberts to stab Republicans in the back on a big issue to demonstrate that SCOTUS is impartial. I’m sure Obama blackmailed Roberts to approve Obamacare though. Roberts.
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