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The imposition of tariffs has been the lynchpin of President Trump’s economic plan. The introduction of different tariffs for every single country that does business with the United States as a means of balancing trade deficits, however, has been met with skepticism in many places- enough so that the Supreme Court is hearing arguments to decide whether the tariffs at the center of the Big Beautiful Bill are illegal. WOR White House correspondent Jon Decker has covered both the President and the Supreme Court since the Bill Clinton administration; he appeared on 710 WOR’s Mendte in the Morning program to explain the ramifications of the case and what effect the ruling could have on Trump’s economic engine.
Decker, who has a law degree, succinctly explained for host Larry Mendte the legal argument the Supreme Court will address when ruling in this case. “What they’re going to decide is whether the President acted legally when he used a law from 1977 that’s called IEEPA, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, to impose tariffs on every one of America’s trading partners. IEEPA has never been used before by any President, not even Donald Trump in his first term, to impose tariffs in that fashion, and I heard the questions that were posed, Larry, by the Supreme Court justices, even the conservative ones, and they are very skeptical about the President’s policies concerning tariffs and whether the President acted legally in taking the action that he did.”
The argument against Trump’s actions, Decker says, comes down to who controls America’s money: “What they’re saying is that it’s Congress. Congress has the power of the purse. Congress and the Constitution can levy taxes and duties, not the President, and they say that there’s no emergency that would involve IEEPA that would lead the President to impose these tariffs on every one of America’s trading partners.”
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