Donald Trump’s aides have been mad at work trying to come up with a backup plan to salvage his trade war against much of the rest of the planet if an upcoming Supreme Court hearing doesn’t go MAGA’s way.
The nation’s top judges convene Wednesday to review the president’s use of the International Emergency Powers Act (IEPA), otherwise reserved for times of national crisis sparked by threats from abroad, to slap levies on dozens of countries, among them some of the United States’ most crucial trading partners.
While the White House has publicly signalled confidence that the ruling is set to go their way, efforts over the past several weeks to come up with a Plan B suggest its self-assurance may not in fact be ironclad.
Behind closed doors, Politico reports that MAGA advisers have modeled several different options for reconstituting powers otherwise afforded to Trump under IEPA using a patchwork of other laws.
SCOTUS will assess whether Trump’s claims of “unfair” treatment from allies meet the legal threshold of an “unusual and extraordinary threat,” as well as the broader Constitutional question of whether the law can even be read as allowing the executive branch to supplant congressional power over taxation and trade.
Critics say Trump’s justifications fundamentally misrepresent normal patterns of global trade, and two lower courts have already ruled against him.
A third unfavorable judgment from the nation’s highest court, with no prospects of further appeal, would effectively render the president’s controversial use of the law dead in the water, even as tariffs brought under other legal instruments would remain largely untouched.
Politico notes that alternatives sketched out by White House aides would, in turn, work far more slowly and with a much more limited scope, while also leaving the administration just as open to legal challenge as it has already found itself.
“There’s no other legal authority that will work as quickly or give the president the flexibility he wanted,” one source, who worked on Trump’s previous legal efforts in this regard, told the outlet.
“They seem very confident that they’re going to win. I don’t see why they’re confident at all. Two different courts have ruled extremely harshly on this,” that person added.
For all his administration’s bravado, the president himself does appear to be feeling the pressure, announcing last month he’d consider attending the Supreme Court hearing in person.
While he backtracked Monday, he warned of dire consequences if things don’t go his way.
“It will be, in my opinion, one of the most important and consequential Decisions ever made by the United States Supreme Court,” he wrote on Truth Social.
“If we win, we will be the Richest, Most Secure Country anywhere in the World, BY FAR. If we lose, our Country could be reduced to almost Third World status,” he added.
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment on this story.
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