Comment: If justices limit Trump's power, it starts with tariffs

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

By Noah Feldman / Bloomberg Opinion

Until now, the U.S. Supreme Court has been modestly deferential to Donald Trump’s executive overreach. Oral arguments in the case challenging the legality of the president’s tariffs suggest that this may be about to change.

The court’s three liberal justices appear sure to vote that Trump lacked the authority to impose the tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Neil Gorsuch and Justice Amy Coney Barrett all sounded as though they were contemplating joining their liberal colleagues; each for reasons rooted in their individual versions of conservative jurisprudence. If at least two of the three decided to join, as now seems possible, Trump will have to try and reimpose the tariffs based on a patchwork of other legal authorities, which might significantly constrain his ability to do so effectively.

The technical question before the court is whether the words “regulate … importation” in the IEEPA empower Trump to adopt essentially any tariffs he chooses once he has determined that an emergency exists under the statute. His best argument is that imposing tariffs is a means of regulating importation. A textualist reading of the statute would, under that interpretation, appear to support Trump’s power. What’s more, as Justice Brett Kavanaugh emphasized during oral arguments, former President Richard Nixon adopted a tariff under the authority of a predecessor statute to the IEEPA. That tariff was upheld by an appeals court; a fact that Congress knew when it enacted the IEEPA.

The arguments against Trump’s tariff power are varied; and as it happens, each of the conservatives who might vote against him has a different theory of why his actions are problematic. Roberts’s pet theory is the Major Questions Doctrine, known to Supreme Court nerds as MQD.

https://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/comment-if-justices-limit-trumps-power-it-starts-with-tariffs/

[Turbineguy]

1. They would take away his only tool for international diplomacy.

That's why we elect smarter guys than him to do the job.