Our forthcoming book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics.
Ben Berkowitz, Courtenay Brown at Axios:A three-judge panel of the Court of International Trade — Reagan, Obama and Trump appointees — ruled that Trump does not have the authority to impose sweeping tariffs under 1970s-era emergency legislation.In fact, the judges said an injunction wasn't enough — they issued a summary judgment invalidating and blocking almost all of Trump's trade levies to date.
Those levies were vast, from a 10% global baseline tariff, to fentanyl-related tariffs on China, Canada and Mexico, to (paused) reciprocal tariffs on dozens of other countries.
They effectively raised U.S. tariff rates to their highest levels since the 1930s, and threatened to cost American households thousands of dollars in higher goods costs.
The big picture: Tens of thousands of containers full of goods enter the United States every day.Whether or even what levies to assess on their contents today, versus yesterday, is a mess that could snarl commerce across the country for days to come.
Follow the money: The levies, while causing huge economic strain, were also generating significant revenue for the government — almost $23 billion so far this month.They were meant to be a cornerstone of the administration's fiscal plans — trade adviser Peter Navarro wrote in an op-ed Wednesday that tariffs would generate up to $3.3 trillion in revenue over the next decade.
Not all the income will disappear, though; tariffs imposed under a different legal authority called Section 232 — including on imports of autos, steel and aluminum — are unaffected by the ruling.
What they're saying: "This really *is* Liberation Day: The court's decision striking down Trump's mass tariffs as unlawful is a tremendous triumph for the rule of law, human freedom, and prosperity, and a deserved rebuke for arbitrary one-man rule over our livelihoods," Walter Olsen, senior fellow at the Cato Institute's Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies, said of the ruling.
