SCOTUS USF Dissent Could Factor Into Trump Tariffs Case: AEI Fellow
The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the USF in Consumers’ Research v. FCC could prove critical as justices hear argument Wednesday on President Donald Trump’s legal authority to impose tariffs, said Adam White, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, in a blog post Monday. The case turns on how justices view presidential authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977, White wrote. “If justices see the Trump tariffs as mainly a matter of foreign policy, and if they see IEEPA’s ‘regulate’ provision as ambiguous, then perhaps they will give substantial deference to the president’s interpretation.”
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But the sweeping nature of the tariffs could give the justices pause, White noted. “The sheer enormity of many of these new taxes, the erratic changes he makes to them, their immediate effects on U.S. companies and consumers, and his repeated identification of tariffs as revenue for domestic policy programs make this at least as much a matter of domestic policy as it is a matter of foreign policy.”
White said the dissent in the USF case (see 2507070049), written by conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch and joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, could prove critical. “Taxation ranks among the government’s greatest powers. Indeed, it is arguably the federal government’s ‘most important ... authorit[y],’” White quoted from the dissent. “Congress already has ceded enormous power to presidents, [the justices] warned, and ‘by approving a delegation of Congress’s taxing power unprecedented in this Court’s history, we risk making matters worse yet.’”