The Supreme Court of the United States will soon be making a pivotal decision that will either severely hamper President Donald Trump's attempt to consolidate power — or exacerbate it.
That's according to a Thursday essay by The Atlantic's Paul Rosenzweig, who argued that there's a lot more at stake than Trump's tariffs in the V.O.S. Selections Inc. v. Trump case to be heard this fall. He emphasized that depending on how the Court rules, it could "be the first substantive instance of the justices intervening to restrain him" or "be an enormously consequential decision, signaling the Court’s complete abdication of review authority."
"To say that the future of the constitutional system of checks and balances hinges on what the Court does is no exaggeration," Rosenzweig wrote.
READ MORE: 'Republicans are coming for your guns!' Trump DOJ ripped over 'legally illiterate' policy
The case stems from a lawsuit claiming that Trump doesn't have the power to unilaterally impose new import taxes on countries around the world simply by claiming an economic emergency. Trump invoked the International Economic Emergency Powers Act of 1977 (IEEPA) to impose the vast bulk of his tariffs earlier this year. However, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled in a 7-4 decision last week that Trump tariffs under the IEEPA were unconstitutional.
Rosenzweig wrote that the four judges on the opposite side of that decision argued that Trump had the authority to impose the new trade duties, writing in their dissent: "Large and persistent annual U.S. goods trade deficits have led to the hollowing out of our manufacturing base; inhibited our ability to scale advanced domestic manufacturing capacity; undermined critical supply chains; and rendered our defense-industrial base dependent on foreign adversaries." He characterized the dissent as Trump having the ability to simply create an emergency out of thin air and assume new powers as a result.
"If that is the case, then the president’s control of the national economy by emergency declaration becomes near plenary. Economic claims are especially strong given the fungible nature of economic production," he wrote. "For example, in defending Trump’s tariffs before the federal circuit, the government attorneys went so far as to say that the only limit on the president’s emergency economic authority was that he had to find that the emergency had a source that was in substantial part outside the United States."
Currently, Congress alone has the power to decide tariffs, according to Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution. But if the Supreme Court sides with Trump this fall, those powers may be effectively stripped away for good.
READ MORE: Legal expert warns Trump saving this 'big heavy gun' for 'when all hell has broken loose'
Click here to read Rosenzweig's full essay in the Atlantic.
