Free Republic

President Trump’s tariffs are one of the broadest claims of executive power in American history, taxing imports from anywhere on his personal whim. The problem is he doesn’t have that power under the law or the Constitution, as the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled late Friday in V.O.S. Selections v. U.S. This is a crucial moment for the Constitution’s separation of powers. A 7-4 majority upheld a lower-court decision striking down the tariffs that Mr. Trump imposed under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). In February he invoked the law to slap taxes on imports...

During the Biden administration, conservative challengers won Supreme Court victories that limited the president’s power to craft policy in matters from student-debt relief to air pollution. Now, those precedents are returning to haunt one of their greatest champions: President Trump. On Wednesday, a specialized federal court in New York invalidated the worldwide tariffs Trump imposed to address a range of issues on his agenda, from international trade imbalances to cross-border trafficking of fentanyl. The unanimous decision by the U.S. Court of International Trade relied in part on the “major questions” doctrine, which the Supreme Court adopted in 2022 to bar...