By Ryan Hanrahan
The Wall Street Journal’s Jess Bravin and Gavin Bade reported that “President Trump’s global tariffs ran headlong into a skeptical Supreme Court on Wednesday, with justices across the spectrum expressing doubt that a 1970s emergency-powers law could be read to provide the president unilateral authority to remake the international economy and collect billions of dollars in import taxes without explicit congressional approval.”
“But even if the court strikes down the tariffs Trump initiated on his self-declared Liberation Day last April, the justices gave little indication how they might unwind the president’s signature economic policy and favorite diplomatic tool,” Bravin and Bade reported. “That left unclear whether previously paid duties would be refunded or whether Congress could be invited to step in, perhaps by ratifying the levies retroactively. ‘It seems to me like it could be a mess,’ Justice Amy Coney Barrett said during the later stages of an oral argument that ran nearly three hours.”
“Solicitor General John Sauer took heat from all sides as he pressed the administration’s argument: that the president’s power to regulate foreign financial transactions when he declares an emergency includes the authority to impose tariffs,” Bravin and Bade reported. “Tariffs were taxes, a majority of justices agreed, and many were dubious that Congress would so casually surrender to the executive its core constitutional power to raise revenue.”
Source : illinois.edu