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The lawyer representing United States President Donald Trump\u2019s administration is facing tough questions from conservative and liberal US Supreme Court justices over the legality of the Republican president\u2019s sweeping tariffs in a case with implications for the global economy that marks a major test of Trump\u2019s powers.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, the justices pressed US Solicitor General D John Sauer, arguing for the administration, about whether Trump had intruded on the power of Congress in imposing tariffs under a 1977 law meant for national emergencies. They also asked Sauer whether Trump\u2019s application of the statute to impose tariffs of unlimited duration was a major action by the executive branch that would require clear congressional authorisation.<\/p>\n list of 4 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n The\u00a0arguments come in appeals pursued by the administration after lower courts ruled that his unprecedented use of a 1977 federal law at issue to impose the tariffs exceeded his authority. Businesses affected by the tariffs and 12 US states, most of them Democratic-led, challenged the tariffs.<\/p>\n Trump has heaped pressure on the Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, to preserve tariffs that he has leveraged as a key economic and foreign policy tool. The tariffs \u2013 taxes on imported goods \u2013 could add up to trillions of dollars for the US over the next decade.<\/p>\n Sauer kicked off the arguments by defending the legal rationale employed by the president, but immediately faced questions raising scepticism about the administration\u2019s arguments about the language and purpose of the statute at issue.<\/p>\n Trump invoked the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA, to impose the tariffs on nearly every US trading partner. The law allows a president to regulate commerce in a national emergency.<\/p>\n Sauer said Trump determined that US trade deficits have brought the nation to the brink of an economic and national security catastrophe. Sauer said imposition of the tariffs has helped Trump negotiate trade deals, and unwinding those agreements \u201cwould expose us to ruthless trade retaliation by far more aggressive countries and drive America from strength to failure with ruinous economic and national security consequences\u201d.<\/p>\n The US Constitution grants Congress, not the president, the authority to issue taxes and tariffs. The administration has argued that IEEPA allows tariffs by authorising the president to \u201cregulate\u201d imports to address emergencies.<\/p>\n The imposition of taxes on Americans \u201chas always been the core power of Congress\u201d, conservative Chief Justice John Roberts told Sauer, adding that these tariffs seem to be raising revenue, which the Constitution considers a role for Congress.<\/p>\n Conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett questioned Sauer about his argument that IEEPA\u2019s language granting presidents emergency power to \u201cregulate importation\u201d encompasses tariffs.<\/p>\n \u201cCan you point to any other place in the code or any other time in history where that phrase together \u2018regulate importation\u2019 has been used to confer tariff-imposing authority?\u201d Barrett asked.<\/p>\n US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in the lead-up to the arguments that if the Supreme Court rules against Trump\u2019s use of IEEPA, his tariffs are expected to remain in place because the administration would switch to other legal authorities to underpin them. Trump has imposed some additional tariffs, invoking other laws. Those are not at issue in this case.<\/p>\n Sauer said the president\u2019s actions in imposing the tariffs did not violate the Supreme Court\u2019s \u201cmajor questions\u201d doctrine, which requires executive branch actions of vast economic and political significance to be clearly authorised by Congress. The Supreme Court applied this doctrine to strike down key policies of Trump\u2019s Democratic predecessor Joe Biden.<\/p>\n A lower court, in ruling against Trump, found that the tariffs were impermissible under this doctrine.<\/p>\n Some of the justices, in questioning Sauer on whether Trump\u2019s tariffs would survive scrutiny under the \u201cmajor questions doctrine\u201d, noted that Congress did not include the word tariffs in IEEPA.<\/p>\n Roberts challenged Sauer to explain why the court\u2019s major questions doctrine would not apply to Trump\u2019s tariffs under IEEPA.<\/p>\n \u201cThe justification is being used for a power to impose tariffs on any product, from any country, in any amount, for any length of time. I\u2019m not suggesting it\u2019s not there, but it does seem like that\u2019s major authority, and the basis for that claim seems to be a misfit. So why doesn\u2019t it apply?\u201d Roberts asked.<\/p>\n Sauer said the doctrine does not apply in the foreign affairs context, but Roberts then raised doubts that the president\u2019s power in this domain could override inherent powers of Congress.<\/p>\n \u201cThe vehicle is the imposition of taxes on Americans, and that has always been the core power of Congress,\u201d Roberts told Sauer.<\/p>\n Trump is the first president to use IEEPA to impose tariffs, one of the many ways he has aggressively pushed the boundaries of executive authority since he returned to office in areas as varied as his\u00a0crackdown on immigration, the\u00a0firing of federal agency officials\u00a0and\u00a0domestic military deployments.<\/p>\n Liberal Justice Elena Kagan pressed Sauer about his claim that Trump\u2019s tariffs are supported by the president\u2019s inherent powers under the Constitution. Kagan said the power to impose taxes and regulate foreign commerce is usually thought of as \u201cquintessential\u201d powers belonging to Congress, not the president.<\/p>\n Liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said IEEPA was intended to limit presidential authority, not expand it.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s pretty clear that Congress was trying to constrain the emergency powers of the president,\u201d Jackson said.<\/p>\n Conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh asked Sauer about a 10 percent tariff imposed on some imports in the early 1970s by then-President Richard Nixon under a predecessor statute to IEEPA.<\/p>\n Kavanaugh asked, \u201cWhat\u2019s the significance of the Nixon example and precedent here? Because I think figuring that out is really important to deciding this case correctly.\u201d<\/p>\n Neal Katyal, a lawyer arguing for businesses that challenged the tariffs, told the justices that common sense makes clear that the administration\u2019s interpretation of IEEPA is flawed.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is simply implausible that in enacting IEEPA, Congress handed the president the power to overhaul the entire tariff system and the American economy in the process,\u201d Katyal said.<\/p>\n Questions posed by conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch suggested that he thinks Sauer\u2019s claims about the breadth of the president\u2019s inherent foreign affairs powers would threaten to undermine the Constitution\u2019s separation of powers between the federal government\u2019s executive and legislative branches.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat would prohibit Congress from just abdicating all responsibility to regulate foreign commerce \u2013 or for that matter, declare war \u2013 to the president?\u201d Gorsuch asked.<\/p>\n Gorsuch said that, as a practical matter, Congress cannot get authority over tariffs back if IEEPA is interpreted as handing that power over to the president. This interpretation would be a \u201cone-way ratchet toward the gradual but continual accretion of power in the executive branch and away from the people\u2019s elected representatives,\u201d Gorsuch said.<\/p>\n The IEEPA-based tariffs have generated $89bn in estimated collections between February 4 and September 23, when the most recent data was released by the US Customs and Border Protection agency.<\/p>\n The Supreme Court has backed Trump in a series of decisions issued this year on an emergency basis. They have let Trump policies, which were impeded by lower courts amid questions about their legality, to proceed on an interim basis, prompting critics to warn that the justices are refusing to act as a check on the president\u2019s power.<\/p>\n Trump instigated a global trade war when he returned to the presidency in January, alienating trading partners, increasing volatility in financial markets and fueling global economic uncertainty.<\/p>\n He invoked IEEPA in slapping tariffs on goods imported from individual countries to address what he called a national emergency related to US trade deficits, as well as, in February, as economic leverage on China, Canada and Mexico to curb the trafficking of the often-abused painkiller fentanyl and illicit drugs into the US.<\/p>\n Trump has wielded tariffs to extract concessions and renegotiate trade deals, and as a cudgel to punish countries that draw his ire on non-trade political matters. These have ranged from Brazil\u2019s prosecution of former President Jair Bolsonaro, India\u2019s purchases of Russian oil that help fund Russia\u2019s war in Ukraine, and an anti-tariff advertisement by Canada\u2019s Ontario province.<\/p>\n IEEPA gives the president power to deal with \u201can unusual and extraordinary threat\u201d amid a national emergency. It had historically been used for imposing sanctions on enemies or freezing their assets, not to impose tariffs. In passing IEEPA, Congress placed additional limits on the president\u2019s authority compared to a predecessor law.<\/p>\n While the Supreme Court typically takes months to issue rulings after hearing arguments, the Trump administration has asked it to act swiftly in this case.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The lawyer representing United States President Donald Trump\u2019s administration is facing tough questions from conservative and liberal US Supreme Court justices over the legality of the Republican president\u2019s sweeping tariffs in a case with implications for the global economy that marks a major test of Trump\u2019s powers. On Wednesday, the justices pressed US Solicitor General […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1221,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-us-canada-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1262"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1262\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n
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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"