President Donald Trump has yet another new scheme to revive his struck-down tariffs, but it’s already “teetering” as dozens of states go on offense, The Washington Post editorial board wrote on Thursday.
Already, Trump attempted to impose global “reciprocal” tariffs across practically every country under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), until the Supreme Court ruled that wasn’t allowed.
He’s now using a different statute, the board wrote, but that plan could also be in trouble.
“Jamieson Greer, Trump’s U.S. trade representative, claims to have investigated 60 economies representing more than 99 percent of U.S. trade in less than three months. And voilà, his agency concluded that ‘all of the investigated economies’ — all? — happen to be intolerably lax toward goods made with forced labor,” wrote the board. That includes partners like Canada and the European Union.
In the new lawsuit, 25 states said this investigation was a “sham” and that “USTR did not undertake the required level of investigation and consultation” or craft a tariff scheme “tailored to eliminate the purportedly unreasonable conduct of concern.”
This suit will likely sink the newest round of tariffs, wrote the board, because it faces the same problem as the last round: Trump is trying to rewrite what the law says to give himself taxing powers reserved for Congress.
“If Trump has a case for tariffs — whether as revenue raisers, spurs of domestic production or anything else — he ought to do what the Constitution envisions and candidly persuade the people’s elected representatives that they’re in the public interest,” the board concluded. “The creative legal justifications for unilateral tariffs may get him only so far.”
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