02 U.S. Politics

In the end, two of the three Trump-appointed justices voted against the president’s position on his signature economic policy, with only Justice Brett Kavanaugh pleasing him.

The two most conservative justices appointed by other Republican presidents, Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, voted with Trump. They are also the two most likely justices to retire, creating vacancies for Trump to fill.

Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent told “Sunday Morning Futures” host Maria Bartiromo on Sunday that revenue from tariffs would not drop, despite the Supreme Court’s ruling against the authority President Donald Trump’ invoked to levy his “Liberation Day” tariffs.

The high court decided Trump exceeded his powers under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) in a 6-3 ruling issued Friday. Bartiromo questioned Bessent about claims made Friday by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget that the deficit would increase due to the loss of revenue.

“Yes, so, Maria, let’s take a step back here. And Maya MacGuineas should be ashamed, and they should take the word ‘responsible’ out of her organization’s name,” Bessent responded. “Everything she told you was completely irresponsible and, look, where were they when the Biden administration blew out the deficit that we had a fiscal contraction last year? So she should be ashamed.”

“So let me tell you what’s going to happen first, this ruling was a very narrow ruling in terms of the president’s ability to use IEEPA to collect revenues. The Supreme Court said the president can put in a full embargo, but he cannot collect one dollar,” Bessent continued.

Many have disagreed with the rationale for the Trump tariffs, lamented their content and consequences, and been alarmed about the president’s expansive use of emergency powers to impose them. But the Supreme Court’s ruling challenging them ought to be alarming because it allows Congress’s dereliction of duty to continue while tipping the balance of power even further toward the judiciary.

The Supreme Court’s decision, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, is also alarming for a number of other reasons. To begin, it was dubious, seeing as how a splintered majority dismissed all “[s]tatutory text, history, and precedent” to the contrary in holding that tariffs are not a means to “regulate … importation” under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), as Justice Brett Kavanaugh, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, persuasively argued in his dissent. The court’s decision was also nonsensical, given that under its ruling, per the dissent, a president could “shut off all or most imports from China, but not … impose even a $1 tariff on imports from China.”