Ever since Donald Trump returned to the presidency last year, it became increasingly worrisome whether anyone in the government would hold his authoritarian impulses in check.
The Republican majorities in Congress, more concerned about keeping their jobs than performing their constitutional duties, have mostly sat back and let Trump do as he pleases, even if it meant stepping on their turf.
Last week, though, a restraining hand came forward from the highest level of the judicial branch. The Supreme Court, in a 6-3 ruling that included two of the conservative justices appointed by Trump, correctly ruled that the president’s unilateral imposition of tariffs was unconstitutional, exercising a power that he did not by law possess.
When Trump began erratically implementing the tariffs in 2025, he and his advisers claimed the president was using an authority included in a nearly half-century old law, the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act, even though no president before him had ever pretended that this law gave the executive branch that kind of power. To make his case, the president claimed the law was subject to broad interpretation, even though the portion of the law he relied on said nothing about imposing tariffs or taxes.
If Congress in 1977 meant to give presidents then and in the future the extraordinary power to set tariffs, the Supreme Court majority ruled, lawmakers at the time should have and would have said so explicitly in the law. The fact that they did not strongly indicates that was not their intent.
The president, not surprisingly, did not accept defeat for one of his signature economic policies gracefully. He insulted the justices who ruled against him and soon announced he would use different laws to impose tariffs, including a global one of 15%.
Those laws, though, are more cumbersome, with either time limits or mandatory investigations and hearings that can postpone implementation. Plus relying on them could result in further legal challenges, which might include raising a fundamental question that the Supreme Court did not adequately address: Even if Congress desires to, does it have the constitutional authority to delegate to the executive branch a power that is reserved for the legislative branch?
The Constitution grants Congress the “power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises.” It does not say it can hand over this power to tax – and tariffs are a form of federal taxation – to someone else.
People can disagree over the wisdom of tariffs. The president believes they are an essential weapon to use in trade negotiations, to reduce the nation’s trade deficit and debt, and to bring manufacturing jobs back to this country. Others claim that tariffs are counterproductive, raising the cost of living in America while pushing other nations to find trading partners outside of the United States, thus reducing the demand for American-made and American-grown products.
If the president believes he has the better argument, he should take it to Congress and see if lawmakers agree by passing laws to impose the proposed tariffs. That’s how the Founding Fathers intended for the system, with all of its checks and balances, to work.
As Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing with the majority, instructed, the legislative process is slow and difficult by design. “Through that process, the Nation can tap the combined wisdom of the people’s elected representatives, not just that of one faction or man. There, deliberation tempers impulse, and compromise hammers disagreements into workable solutions. And because laws must earn such broad support to survive the legislative process, they tend to endure, allowing ordinary people to plan their lives in ways they cannot when the rules shift from day to day.”
Congress needs to start acting as if it understands this, too.
