Throughout his 2024 campaign, President Donald Trump ran on imposing broad tariffs on most of the world as a means of revitalizing the American manufacturing sector. But most of those tariffs are now moot after a monumental court ruling this week, and one journalist is arguing that Trump’s loss was his own fault.
In a Thursday article for The American Prospect, executive editor David Dayen posited that Trump’s loss in the Court of International Trade on Wednesday was entirely avoidable, and that he bungled it by not following clear processes. He marveled that the three-judge panel consisting of Ronald Reagan, Barack Obama and Donald Trump appointees unanimously striking down Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs came despite overwhelmingly favorable political circumstances.
“Donald Trump is absolutely terrible at getting things done,” Dayen wrote. “Despite a Republican Party filled with sycophants and a Democratic Party that still can’t figure out how to resist him, despite a cowed media, business, and legal elite, despite the prodigious powers of the presidency, he still manages to stumble.”
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According to Dayen, Trump’s tariffs could have remained in place had he adhered to basic procedures. Typically, the power to put new trade duties on imported goods lies with Congress, though Congress has delegated some of those powers to the executive branch over the past several decades. Of the six possible ways a president can raise tariffs, three of them require an executive branch investigation that finds countries have violated trade agreements, are acting maliciously to injure an American industry or that they’re harming national security in some other way.
Two additional avenues for a president to impose tariffs don’t require such investigations, but they do limit the percentage rate of new tariffs to 15% and 50%, depending on the specific case. Dayen acknowledged that the final remaining method was the International Economic Emergency Powers Act of 1977 (IEEPA), which Trump invoked to justify doing an end-run around Congress to put new tariffs in place.
However, the IEEPA statute doesn’t even include the word “tariffs,” only that a president can “regulate imports” under new emergency powers. But as the Court of International Trade panel ruled Wednesday, the IEEPA does not grant the authority to raise trade duties on most of the world with no set end point. Dayen opined that the court ruling was “great news,” and illustrates how Trump’s aversion to following normal laws in his second term can come back to bite him.
“Pushing the boundaries of legality has been both a hallmark and an Achilles’ heel for Trump over the past several months,” he wrote. “When he has succeeded, like with seemingly being allowed to fire members of independent agencies, he has entrenched executive power. But when he falters, like with this layup on tariffs, he has taken parts of his agenda that were fully realizable and turned them into dust.”
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Click here to read Dayen’s full article in The American Prospect.
