In a historic 6-3 decision today (Feb. 20), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the tariff tax increases unilaterally imposed by the executive branch under emergency powers are unconstitutional. This ruling reaffirms that the power to tax is exclusively reserved to the legislative branch.
In a 170-page opinion with several concurrences, the court said: “Article I, Section 8, of the Constitution specifies that ‘The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises.’ The Framers recognized the unique importance of this taxing power—a power which ‘very clear[ly]’ includes the power to impose tariffs. Gibbons v. Ogden, 9 Wheat. 1, 201. And they gave Congress ‘alone . . . access to the pockets of the people.’ The Federalist No. 48, p. 310 (J. Madison). The Framers did not vest any part of the taxing power in the Executive Branch.”
Concerned about the precedent of allowing the executive branch to use emergency powers to bypass Congress’s taxing power, Mountain States Policy Center joined an amicus brief urging the U.S. Supreme Court to rule that the tariff tax increases are unconstitutional.
Had the court allowed the assumed unilateral tariff power for the executive branch to stand, nothing would have prevented a future president from declaring something like a “climate emergency” to impose tariff tax increases.
Justice Gorsuch made this point in his concurrence: “And without doctrines like major questions, our system of separated powers and checks-and-balances threatens to give way to the continual and permanent accretion of power in the hands of one man. That is no recipe for a republic… A ruling for him here, the President acknowledges, would afford future Presidents the same latitude he asserts for himself. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 69. So another President might impose tariffs on gas-powered automobiles to respond to climate change. Ibid. Or, really, on virtually any imports for any emergency any President might perceive. And all of these emergency declarations would be unreviewable. Just ask yourself: What President would willingly give up that kind of power?”
Whether tariff tax increases are good or bad economic policy, the fact remains that tax increases should be introduced, debated and voted on by Congress. Major economic policies of any kind should not be imposed by one person unilaterally. This decision by the U.S. Supreme Court upholds and affirms that important check and balance of our republic.
Jason Mercier is Vice President and Director of Research of Mountain States Policy Center, an independent research organization based in Idaho, Montana, Eastern Washington and Wyoming. Online at mountainstatespolicy.org.
