Editors at National Review Online call on Congress to do its job.
Last Wednesday, standing at a podium in the White House Rose Garden, the president of the United States threw the world’s economy into turmoil. Having declared that America’s trade deficit represented a bona fide “emergency,” President Trump revealed a completely rewritten federal tariff regime. The result of these alterations was an increase in protectionist barriers that exceeded even the infamous Smoot-Hawley law in its scope. …
… At present, more than $10 trillion of investment has been wiped out, and every stockholder in the world is watching the Oval Office in the hope of discovering what to do next. Apparently, l’état, c’est moi is in reruns.
If it seems preposterous that a single person could enjoy this much power over the American economy — and, with it, the global economy — rest assured that it is. In Article I, the Constitution vests the “power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises” in Congress, not in the president. As a result, the president has no power to impose tariffs that he has not been accorded by an act of the legislature. If it desires, Congress can choose to take back as much of that power as it sees fit. It ought to do so — and do so now.
That the Founders placed the power to tax, tariff, and legislate in the hands of the legislature, instead of the executive, was not an accident. On the contrary: This allocation sat at the very core of the system that they designed. …
… The very fact that our system charges Congress with setting tariffs ought to be sufficient to get Congress to do its job. So, too, ought the president’s cynical conflation of his personal political preferences and the existence of an “emergency” that unlocks his absolute powers. But, if duty to their oaths does not move them, the raw chaos of the last five days should certainly substitute as motivation.
