Federalist Society 1 - Trump 0
Round 2 will start soon.
This decision took way too long and was always obvious that it should be struck down. Nobody with a functioning brain would think the president can tax our own citizens unilaterally like this.
My take? Trump is damaged goods now and SCOTUS no longer fears him.
SCOTUS decisions take a while to write. Given the 6-3 vote, they almost certainly came to the decision in the first vote they took after oral argument. But it appears that there was significant disagreement within the majority over what reasoning justified that conclusion. Which is how you end up with a 46-page concurrence.
And now come the law suit asking for refund of tariffs paid. Where will this money come from? National debt? More stimulus for gold buying.
IMO Trump and his friends have lots of skim money to afford the refunds.
Well… Actually the commerce secretary’s son has been buying tariff refund claims for 30 cents on the dollar…
The actions of this administration is highly questionable, bordering unethical. But the country voted for this.
So the tariffs which decimated famers’ markets because China stopped buying entirely and other countries cut back … and the revenue from which he was going to compensate farmers with a Big Beautiful Bailout, now turns out to have no revenue, the farmers are crapped on, and tariffs are off, and the lawsuits for refunds are revving up even as we speak.
Terrific policy there. Can I have some more, please?
Ugghh. I can’t believe how far we’ve fallen.
What would justify the conclusion? How long should that take? An above average 7th grader should be able to explain why the President can’t impose duties on imports. Why? It clearly says it in the U.S. Constitution.
Has any members of the Supreme Court actually read the U.S. Constitution? I mean other than memorizing the preamble in 8th grade; do they take the U.S. Constitution seriously?
authority to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises is granted exclusively to Congress How hard is it to “reasonably justify” this clear cut statement? Even if you give a moment to refer to The Trade Act of 1974, you still have to read into it that Congress must consent to tariffs, which is written into the Act.
The only reasonable conclusion (regarding the Court) is that the U.S. Constitution is not worth the paper it was written on.
Also, where will it go to? There is a nice windfall coming… for large importers (for consumers, not so much perhaps):
As of December 14, the federal government has collected $134 billion in revenue from the tariffs being challenged from over 301,000 different importers, according to United States Customs and Border Protection data as well as a recent filing submitted by the agency to the US Court of International Trade.
/economic content
N.B. It is really good to see some of your checks and balances are still working.
Over decades, Congress has been eager to delegate parts of its competencies over to the president - perhaps to make the critters’ life more comfortable. This president has been eager to use and abuse it to the max. Today has put a hard stop to that. At least on that particular aspect - it is now more clear that the president is not entitled to pass “elephants” through “mouseholes” established by Congress.
Seems odd, given that the tariff power is reserved for the Legislative in the Constitution.
I read a week or so ago that most of the revenue generated by the tariffs (and it was substantial) was paid by Americans. So, the “bonus checks” this administration was talking about sending out would just be a refund of the tariffs that were illegally levied. Though, any given individual would likely have paid more or less than the distributed amount, and it would be really tough (impossible?) to determine what each individual actually paid. 1poorkid asked (rhetorically) “how are they going to refund the tariffs I paid”.
Are you sure? He’s imposing an additional 10% tariff now. If Congress allows this, we’re cooked. It’s over. Didn’t even last 250 years.
This wasn’t a Constitutional case. It was a statutory construction case.
Who the Constitution gives the initial power to impose duties on imports to was not in dispute in the case. It is Congress. The President has no Article II power to impose duties. The government did not contend it did. Congress writes the rules for how tariffs are imposed.
However, Congress has written a bunch of statutes on tariffs - and many of those statutes give the President the power to impose tariffs. Congress is allowed to do this. The President doesn’t have any inherent power to impose tariffs - but Congress can write a statute that says, “if X happens the President can impose Y tariff.” They’ve done it a lot.
So, in this case the dispute did not involve the Constitution at all - it involved looking at one specific statute and determining whether Congress by statute had authorized the President to impose these tariffs.
The dispute among the justices in the majority was about how the Court was to answer that question. Judges use a lot of tools and rules for engaging in statutory construction. They look at the text, they look at legislative history, they look at past practice - lots of different things that they ostensibly rely on to guide their interpretation.
Three of the Justices believe strongly in a principle of statutory construction called the major questions doctrine. They think that one of the things a judge should look at is whether the matter under dispute is so important that if Congress didn’t specifically mention that matter in the statute, the judge should infer that the statutory text doesn’t reach that matter. Three of the Justices did not believe that principle should be applied here (and they generally don’t support the major questions doctrine generally).
Because these two groups of three Justices believe very different things about statutory construction, it was always going to be more work to get an opinion drafted. And even then, it was only about 100 days from oral argument to opinion release - which isn’t especially long for SCOTUS.
Not odd at all - this wasn’t a Constitutional case. Plaintiffs never argued that the Constitution prohibited delegation of the tariff power to the President - just that Congress had not delegated the tariff power in this statute.
Well, yesterday the court put a hard stop to exploring this particular mousehole.
Congress may not be all too keen to impose new unpopular sweeping tariffs ahead of the mid terms. In any case, the mantra is “I don’t need Congress for anything”.
So he will be imposing “global” 10% tariffs on some other legal basis (Trade Act section 122). Risks and downsides are plenty
These republicans will do anything to stay on the right side of Trump. Watch how many voices are going to come out of woodwork and start demanding tariff legislations.
The economic policies being applied welcome the decision. First, he will refund corporations happily and quickly. Second, the deficit will soar. Third, remember tariffs on American goods for export are now much higher. Those won’t come down.
Forgive and forget? Hardly. Game on! is what the world is saying.
The higher the debt can get, the sooner he can default. He needs to fit the default into the next three years. For the midterms, he is an animal rescue shelter hero.
Meanwhile, unemployment is rising, economic growth is slowing, and inflation is coming down. We will enter into deflation. The worst of all worlds is deflation.
Welcome to the machine!
The American public should sue for a refund. The US corporations passed the buck to the rest of us. The US corporations should not get the refund.
Where is the press when you need them? Lovely people skipping through life selling ad space.
Now we know who wears the pants in the family. And who dresses the others.
Gorsuch was part of the 6-3 majority that struck down most of Trump’s tariffs on Friday, but he wrote a separate 46-page opinion that chided several of his fellow justices over how they approached the case.
His colleagues were effectively applying the same Supreme Court precedent differently under Trump than they did under Biden, he argued, writing: “It is an interesting turn of events.”
His invective focused on a theory known as the “major questions doctrine,” which adherents say bars sweeping presidential action not specifically authorized by Congress. The conservative-majority court embraced the doctrine while Biden was in office to strike down broad plans, such as his effort to forgive student loan debt.
