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Justice Amy Coney Barrett had pointed questions Wednesday about the law Donald Trump invoked to impose global tariffs, joining several other justices on the right and left in voicing skepticism about the president’s ability to use a tool he has deemed critical to carrying out his economic agenda.
Solicitor General John Sauer repeatedly argued during the lengthy 2½-hour oral arguments that the emergency law Trump used to enact the tariffs for nearly every U.S. trading partner contained language about regulating imports, which Sauer said included using tariffs. The relevant statute permits the president to “regulate … nullify [and] void … importation,” but it does not use the word “tariff.” Barrett pressed Sauer on this point.
“Can you point to any other place in the code or any other time in history where that phrase together, ‘regulate importation,’ has been used to confer tariff-imposing authority?” Barrett, a Trump appointee, asked.
SUPREME COURT PREPARES TO CONFRONT MONUMENTAL CASE OVER TRUMP EXECUTIVE POWER AND TARIFF AUTHORITY
U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett speaks at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library Foundation in Simi Valley, Calif., April 4, 2022. (AP)
Sauer noted one other trade law that had served as a precursor to the emergency law in question, but Barrett appeared unconvinced, repeating her question as Sauer failed to offer direct responses.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, an Obama appointee, interjected, asking Sauer to “just answer the justice’s question.”
Sotomayor at one point noted that no president has ever used the emergency law, known as the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, to impose tariffs, though Sauer argued that President Richard Nixon’s tariffs were used that way even if the IEEPA did not exist at that stage.
“It’s a congressional power, not a presidential power to tax,” Sotomayor said. “And you want to say tariffs are not taxes. But that’s exactly…
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