WASHINGTON – During oral arguments Wednesday on a case brought by Minnesota and other states, U.S. Supreme Court justices appeared skeptical of President Donald Trump’s tariff policies.
Those levies have also been targeted in the U.S. Senate, which has recently approved three resolutions aimed at reining in Trump’s tariff policies.
One resolution was co-sponsored by Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn. It would reject Trump’s declaration of a national emergency to impose tariffs on Canada.
The win on that resolution, and on two others that also rejected the emergency declaration, was made possible when a group of GOP senators joined all Democrats in supporting Klobuchar’s legislation.
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Republican Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine and Mitch McConnell of Kentucky voted for Klobuchar’s resolution.
The legislation faces long odds in the U.S. House. But the bipartisan votes for Klobuchar’s bill, along with GOP support for a resolution that would end global tariff authority, and another that focused on Brazil, served as a rebuke of Trump’s use of a 1977 emergency law to impose the global duties.
The president claimed the tariffs are warranted because the country’s trade deficit qualifies as a national emergency, a claim whose validity will now be decided by the Supreme Court.
The high court will now decide on the case against Trump tariffs brought by Minnesota and 11 other states and a similar case filed by small businesses that also challenged the steep, widespread duties the president has imposed on foreign friends and enemies alike.
Klobuchar was among a handful of lawmakers attending the oral arguments.
“I’m glad I was there,” she told MinnPost, citing the impact of tariffs on small businesses and farmers in Minnesota, including soybean farmers who have seen their exports to China, a prime market, evaporate because of Trump’s trade wars.
Klobuchar also said, “I thought the hearing went well.”
The Supreme Court heard challenges to two sets of tariffs. One is aimed at stopping shipments of fentanyl and chemicals used to make the drug from China, Mexico and Canada. Another targets new tariffs imposed on nearly every country.
Trump imposed those tariffs to wrangle better trade deals and has boasted about the billions of dollars they have brought the U.S. Treasury.
Those tariffs, which are paid by importers to customs agencies before being sent to the Treasury, are largely passed along to consumers as higher prices for imported goods. Many economists, and some of the justices on Wednesday, call them a tax.
Trump has also said he has had to impose the levies to reduce a trade deficit the president says has brought the United States to the brink of an economic and national security catastrophe.
The justices sharply questioned lawyers representing the plaintiffs of those cases and government attorneys over the president’s authority to use tariffs as a weapon in a national emergency and if a national emergency existed based on Trump’s allegations of unfair trade practices.
‘Not a presidential power’
A decision is expected to be expedited because of the high stakes in the case for the government, U.S. companies and other countries, as well as the daunting task of refunding the tariffs if the high court decides they are unconstitutional. So, a ruling could come later this month or early next month.
“It’s just a mess,” Klobuchar said of the prospect of having to return tens of billions of dollars in tariff money. “That’s why you don’t want the president to use statutes in a way that is not legal.”
Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, Ketanji Brown Jackson and Chief Justice John Roberts appeared to be strongly against the government during more than two hours of oral arguments.
“I just don’t understand,” Sotomayor said of the arguments of the government’s lawyer, Solicitor General D. John Sauer. “This is not a presidential power. It’s a congressional power.”
At issue is whether the tariffs are “regulatory,” which would give Trump some authority to use them, or “revenue-raising.” Only Congress has the authority to impose revenue-raising measures.
Roberts said Trump’s tariffs were an “imposition of taxes on Americans and that has always been the core power of Congress.”
Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh appeared to be open to Sauer’s arguments. The court’s conservative majority has been sympathetic to Trump’s use of broad presidential power.
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Yet Justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett had pointed questions for Sauer and those conservative justices could be swing votes.
“It may not be a liberal versus conservative ruling,” Klobuchar said.
Klobuchar said she was hopeful the justices would strip Trump of broad tariff authority.
‘Cautiously optimistic’
She said her “favorite moment” during the oral arguments was when Gorsuch said in a loud voice that the power of taxation was unique and powerful and only Congress has the authority to impose taxes and decide the intent of the 1977 law.
“I kept wanting to yell out from the back of the room that I know about congressional intent,” Klobuchar said.
Meanwhile, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison said he is “cautiously optimistic the court will hold the president’s extraordinary tariffs unlawful.”
“The Supreme Court was rightly skeptical of the President’s extraordinary assertion of an unreviewable power to impose tariffs on any country, for any length of time, in any amount, simply by declaring an ‘emergency,’” Ellison said in a statement. “Most of the justices on the Supreme Court expressed serious concern about the President’s claimed power to tariff the entire world, without any grant of that power from Congress… .”
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