Congress Can Stop This Tariff Madness Right Now

By Charles C. W. Cooke

Tuesday, March 04, 2025

 

Here’s the Wall Street Journal on President Trump’s moronic tariffs on Canada and Mexico:

 

Uncertainty is already affecting the economy by slowing business orders and making it harder for companies to plan. This comes as the economy is hit by other forces, including mass layoffs of federal workers, cutbacks to government-funded programs and restrictions on immigration. U.S. stocks tumbled Monday after Trump confirmed tariffs were coming, led by a 2.6% decline in the technology-heavy Nasdaq Composite.

 

. . .

 

Monday’s report on February manufacturing from the Institute for Supply Management included 20 mentions of tariffs in the press release, compared with four in January, Goldman Sachs noted. Among the comments included in that report: “Customers are pausing on new orders as a result of uncertainty regarding tariffs. There is no clear direction from the administration on how they will be implemented, so it’s harder to project how they will affect business.” The Institute’s purchasing managers index fell slightly in February, indicating a slowdown in manufacturing growth.

 

A reminder: Congress can stop this right now. Literally right now. Today. This morning. Before lunch. In a matter of hours. The Constitution gives absolute control over tariffs to Congress. As such, any power that the president enjoys must be delegated. With one bill — passed by veto-proof majorities — Congress could take back some (or all) of that power.

 

The law that President Trump is using to cause such havoc is known as IEEPA. It’s supposed to be for emergencies, but, given that it gives the president free rein to determine when an emergency is in force, it’s effectively a non-justiciable enabling act. Congress can repeal it, amend it, or pass a separate law that supersedes it, and there’s nothing that anybody can do to stop it. Such a law could exempt Canada and Mexico from its provisions, or make clear that other tariff deals involving those countries (like the one Trump signed in 2019) have precedence, or do anything else that Congress wants it to do, because — again! — Congress has plenary power over tariffs. Heck, if Congress passed a law that simply read, “All delegation of the legislature’s Article I, Section 8 tariff powers is hereby rescinded,” that would immediately be the law of the land.

 

I understand that Congress does not want to do this because, despite their protestations when their guy is out of power, both parties like the imperial presidency. But that approach is dumb, shortsighted, and, in this case, obviously illegal under a plain reading of the Constitution. As the Journal notes, quoting Goldman Sachs: “There is no clear direction from the administration on how they will be implemented, so it’s harder to project how they will affect business.” Which, of course, is exactly why we have a Congress in the first place. Written law yields both stability and comprehension. Written law that, once established, can only be changed by the acquiescence of lots and lots of people aids those ends yet further. The last thing you want when dealing with regulation, tax rates, tariffs, or anything else of that sort is to wake up one morning and discover that all the rules have been changed on a whim. Because their power is vested in one person, presidents can do that. Because its power is vested in 535 people, Congress cannot.

 

It would be nice if our legislators could remember that they had been elected to serve in the legislature, rather than to act like unmoored lemmings wearing only their party’s badge. But if the oath they took — plus the constitutional case — isn’t sufficiently motivating, then they might consider acting out of good old-fashioned self-interest. Certainly, Republicans might not want to cross Donald Trump. But, as ought to be clear by the sheer breadth of the opposition to this round of tariffs, they would actually be doing him — and themselves — a favor if they did. Trump was elected to end inflation and fix the border. He’s doing a terrific job on the latter. He’s not doing a good job on the former. These tariffs will make that first job more difficult, and, if there is a recession, the public’s preference for post hoc ergo propter hoc thinking will lead to him, rather than his predecessor, taking the lion’s share of the blame. As for the Democrats? They can boast that they helped put an end to a stupid mistake that would have raised prices for everyone, and thus begin to claw back some of the credibility that they lost when they helped to usher in the worst inflation in 40 years. Already, Donald Trump is a lame duck. Most members of Congress hope to serve for another ten, 20, maybe 30 years. To avoid doing their jobs for fear of being shouted at by the president is the shortest of short-term thinking.

 

Its legality notwithstanding, there was arguably a time in history at which it made utilitarian sense for the president to be in charge of trade deals. But times change. Just as the actions of FDR prompted to Congress to formalize the prohibition on presidents serving more than two terms, so the actions of Donald Trump (and, to a much lesser extent, Joe Biden) ought to prompt Congress to take back the power it has been granted. In a system such as ours, it is utterly bizarre that president enjoys this quasi-monarchical authority. If it wishes, Congress can remove it before you’ve even finished reading this post.