Half a century ago, according to the Trump administration, Congress enacted a law that gave the president sweeping authority to completely rewrite U.S. tariff schedules. But for some reason, no president took advantage of that power until last February.
That story received a skeptical reception last week at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, and it is not hard to see why. The legal pretext for President Donald Trump's stiff, wide-ranging, ever-changing import taxes defies credulity as well as the separation of powers.
In February, Trump announced taxes on imports from Mexico, Canada, and China, which he said were aimed at encouraging increased cooperation in the war on drugs. Two months later, he announced a much broader set of "reciprocal" tariffs that applied to dozens of countries, citing "large and persistent annual U.S. goods trade deficits."
