Emergency Powers

'Reciprocal’ tariffs have been put on hold by the courts. But they had already been stopped by the markets. The reciprocal tariff plan was called off soon after the markets began to collapse.

Source: Getty Images

Monday, June 2nd, 2025

Bill Bonner, from Youghal, Ireland

‘Government’s a little bit nasty.’

—Donald Trump

Synopsis: Federal courts have ruled that the Trump administration cannot do what it was hoping to do. But no matter...it wasn’t going to do it anyway.

The Constitution specifically says that “powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

But since the Franklin Roosevelt administration, the courts have been remarkably tolerant of power grabs by the federales. To the point that...there seemed no limit to what the federal government...or more precisely, POTUS...could get away with.

It says very clearly, for example, that Congress has the power to “declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water.” How then did the US get involved in five major wars since WWII — with no authorization from Congress?

So, when the Trump administration overstepped its Constitutional authority, it was not at all sure that the courts would tell him to back off...or that, if they did, it would have any effect.

A judge ruled two weeks ago that DOGE had no authority to do what it did. But Trump had already pulled the rug out from under Elon Musk and the DOGE team anyway. None of their findings were incorporated in the Republicans’ ‘big, beautiful bill.’ (Poor Elon didn’t realize how ‘nasty’ government can be.) Any savings from that effort are likely to be trivial and temporary.

Likewise, a three-judge panel (one of them appointed by Trump himself) reminded the president that the US still has a constitution. And nowhere in the US Constitution does it give POTUS the right to tax or tariff without express backing from Congress.

Here’s the highest law of the land...the US Constitution:

“The Congress shall have Power to lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises.” It also has the power to “regulate Commerce with foreign Nations.”

Trump’s plan, to impose large, ‘reciprocal’ tariffs, has now been put on hold by the courts. But they had already been stopped by the markets. The reciprocal tariff plan was called off soon after the stock market began to collapse.

And now, the stoppage is de jure as well as de facto.

We saw stark evidence that the Trump Team was not up to speed on Constitutional Law when the ICE queen, Kristi Noem, appeared before Congress on May 19. Her ‘Homeland Security’ department has been deporting people without any ‘due process.’ Naturally, the inquiring minds in Congress wanted to know what she thought she was doing. Didn’t the principle of Habeas Corpus apply, they asked?

It quickly became clear that Ms. Noem, whose job is to enforce the law, didn’t know what the law was...and didn’t particularly care. And apparently, neither did the rest of the Trump Troupe.

And now, Mr. Trump is angry at the Federalist Society for urging him to appoint conservative judges who had read the Constitution...and angry at the judges themselves for daring to spell it out for him. He wanted toadies to croak on cue...not real judges who took their jobs seriously.

Besides, his own legal wizards had told him what he wanted to hear — that Congress authorized the president to act on his own in times of economic emergency. The 1977 legislation, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA, gave the president the power to “deal with any unusual or extraordinary threat.”

Who’s to say that illegal immigrants don’t constitute an ‘emergency?’ And what about the loss of manufacturing?

But immigrants have been pouring into the US ever since it was founded. And trade has been going on for a very long time, too. What’s ‘unusual or extraordinary’ about it? Nor is there anything about it that needs an ‘emergency’ response. Whether the president takes action today...or Congress next week...it’s not going to make much difference.

But here is where the sharp minds of the judiciary earn their money. If the IEEPA allows the president to decide for himself what is ‘unusual’ and what is not...and if the ‘emergency’ can be anything he says...then Congress has, in effect, amended the Constitution so that it no longer imposes a limit on presidential power.

Congress does not have the power to amend the Constitution by itself. And if the Constitution does not limit the power of the chief executive, what does it do? Isn’t it null and void...an artifact of history...like the skull of an extinct species?

The courts were not willing to go that far. Not yet.

But who knows? Franklin Roosevelt was able to get the supreme court to see things his way by threatening to ‘pack the court.’ And now the MAGA crowd eagerly takes aim at the courts too. Yahoo! reports:

Deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller decried a three-judge panel’s ruling that initially halted Trump’s sweeping “reciprocal” tariffs as “judicial tyranny.” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt called it part of a “troubling and dangerous trend of unelected judges inserting themselves into the presidential decision-making process.”

Where this will end up, we don’t know. But since the whole MAGA program was already stalled, maybe the only result is that now the courts will take the blame.

For now, Trump’s project is in a kind of purgatory...not alive, but not yet gone to Hell either.

Regards,

Bill Bonner