Trump's Tariffs: Ill-Advised, Possibly Illegal.

Has the Grifter-In-Chief Broken The Law? And Will Congress Call Him On It?

Donald Trump’s tariff trade war erased 6 trillion dollars from the stock market in two days. Most experts agree that it was and is a pretty ill-advised move on pretty much every level one can think of. But more relevant to us here at Grifter News is this: was it also illegal? And if it was, who if anyone will call Trump out on it?

During his four-year hiatus from the White House, Trump spent a lot of time playing defense in court: there were criminal prosecutions brought against him in state courts in Georgia and New York and there were federal prosecutions brought against him in Florida and Washington D.C. There was also a civil fraud case in New York state court that resulted in a $454 million judgment against him and a civil defamation suit, also in New York, but in federal court, that generated two judgments adding another $93 million to his ledger. The President is no stranger to being in the cross-hairs of the legal system and he has almost always come out unscathed — the federal prosecutions were withdrawn, the Georgia criminal case collapsed, the New York criminal case led to a guilty verdict but a sentence of an unconditional discharge and the civil cases are up on appeal before New York’s Appellate Division, First Department.

But it’s possible that this time could be different. Trump invoked the International Emergency Economic Powers Act as the basis for his “tariff wars” but the Act doesn’t actually allows itself to be used to implement broad-based economic trade policy. The IEEPA was passed by Congress in 1977 to combat what it considered to be overuse of the “Trading With The Enemies” Act, a vestige of the World War I era, and replace it with something more suited to the modern international relations. The IEEPA states that the President has the authority to “deal with any unusual or extraordinary threat” to national security or foreign policy. It was first invoked by Jimmy Carter in response to the Iran hostage crisis and has been used thirty-eight times since then, but always in response to a specific transaction or event to authorize a specific sanction against a specific target: the sanctions against Iran after the hostage crisis, for example.

Historically SCOTUS has shown little hesitation to invalidate acts by the Executive branch that wrongly rely on the IEEPA. For example, in 2022 in West Virginia v EPA, the Court invalidated the Obama administrations’ “Clean Power Plan,” ruling that legislation that aims to regulate an entire industry is not authorized under the IEEPA.

And SCOTUS has a long tradition of reining in Presidential overreach by invoking the so-called “major questions” doctrine to invalidate executive orders and actions that are the responsibility of the Congress. For instance, in the famous Youngstown steel mill case, SCOTUS struck down the attempts of President Truman to seize U.S. steel mills, finding that an industry-wide action that had the scope of Truman’s order could only validly come from Congress.

Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution clear states that the power to tax and regulate commerce resides with Congress, not the President. So will Congress call Trump out on invoking the IEEPA as the basis for his tariffs? When Congress passed a resolution in 2019 to invalidate Trump’s usage of the IEEPA to declare a national emergency at the U.S. southern border, Trump vetoed it. If in fact Congress is bold enough to pass a resolution invalidating Trump’s tariffs, will Trump veto it?

We’re just spitballing with this, because we have no idea at all where this tariff trade war is going. But with every passing day of carnage in the stock market, the number of members of Congress losing a fortune grows (as does the number of millionaires and billionaires who fund said members) and momentum to pass a resolution invaliding Trump’s tariffs will start to build. Who will introduce a resolution and when, and how long will it take to work its way up to SCOTUS, is anyone’s guess. We’ll have to wait and see. If it does happen, remember you read it first here at Grifter News!