Earlier this year the Supreme Court ruled that the president could not use the &quot;International Emergency Economic Powers Act&quot; (IEEPA) to impose tariffs and the administration immediately turned to other legal mechanisms to assert that power.<br><br>Laura Bondank-Harmon interviews Clark Neily and Ilya Somin to unpack the legal battles over Trump’s tariffs, the statutes the administration is now invoking, and the constitutional limits on the president’s power to tax.<br>Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Eternal Quest for More Tariffs

The Cato Weekly Podcast

Since Donald Trump was elected, U.S. trade policy has shifted dramatically. Only months after taking office, he declared a national trade emergency and imposed sweeping tariffs on nearly all foreign trading partners. Six months ago, the Supreme Court struck down these tariffs, ruling that the president cannot use emergency powers to tax imported goods. But despite that decision, the Trump administration keeps finding new avenues to keep their trade agenda going.

Most recently, a 50% tariff was announced for Canadian cars, dairy and alcohol, pulling from a law that has not been used in this way in its 96-year history. At the same time, some members of Congress are drafting a law that would give the president new powers to place tariffs of up to 100% as sanctions on those who continue to buy oil and natural gas from Russia. Since Congress, not the president, holds the constitutional tax power, how are the Trump administration's actions shaping the future of taxing?

I'm Laura Bonding-Carmen, and this is the Cato Podcast. Today, we are joined by two legal experts who can help us understand the moves that the Trump administration is making to justify imposing taxes on imported goods. I'm here with Clark Neely, Senior Vice President of Legal Studies at the Cato Institute, and Ilya Soman, co-counsel in one of the tariff cases from earlier this year, B. Kenneth Simon Chair in Constitutional Studies at the Cato Institute, and Professor of Law at George Mason University Scalia College of Law. Welcome. Thank you for having us. Good to be here.

Clark, can you start us off with some context? Can you remind us what SCOTUS said in Learning Resources v. Trump, the tariff case decided earlier this year? Well, we have a president who thinks that tariffs are sort of...

The Eternal Quest for More Tariffs

Read the full transcript

The candid version is on a podcast,
not the earnings call.

The Eternal Quest for More Tariffs

Read the full transcript

The candid version is on a podcast, not the earnings call.

The candid version is on a podcast,
not the earnings call.