Earlier this week, the Trump administration filed a petition for certiorari urging the Supreme Court to review the Federal Circuit decision in the case challenging the president’s massive “Liberation Day” tariffs, brought by the Liberty Justice Center and myself on behalf of five small businesses harmed by the tariffs (we were later joined by leading constitutional law scholars and Supreme Court litigators Neal Katyal and Michael McConnell). The government also submitted a motion for expedited review.
Today, we submitted a response to the petition, in which we agree the Supreme Court should hear the case and resolve it quickly, so as to put an end to the harm caused by the illegal tariffs as quickly as possible. We previously prevailed in the Court of International Trade, and on appeal in the Federal Circuit, and I hope the Supreme Court – should it take the case – will rule the same way.
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We have presented an assortment of more detailed reasons why “no” is the right answer to the central question raised by this case: the fact that IEEPA doesn’t even mention tariffs and has never previously been used to impose them, that there is no “unusual and extraordinary threat” of the kind required to invoke IEEPA, the major questions doctrine, the constitutional nondelegation doctrine, and more. These points are covered in much greater detail in our various legal filings (see the Liberty Justice Center site for a compilation), and in some of my earlier writings about the litigation.
But if that’s true, IEEPA could be read to allow the president to do literally anything in response to any declared “emergency,” no matter how much of a threat it actually poses—and by declaring trade deficits to be an emergency, Trump has already stretched the meaning of the word to new limits.
The situation is not much different than when the Biden administration claimed the power to forgive all student loans because Congress had once passed a law allowing limited student loan forgiveness for 9/11 first responders. The Supreme Court, in that case, leaned on the major questions doctrine in ruling that executive power should be construed narrowly, not broadly.
It should do the same here. Rather than tying itself into knots to affirm nearly unlimited executive powers over commerce, the Supreme Court should tell the Trump administration to get permission from Congress before imposing new tariffs.
Pierre Lemieux argues that “the whole protectionist doctrine is a sham or an absurdity.”
President Trump says that foreign countries, not Americans, will pay his border taxes. But a new analysis by Anderson Economic Group shows how his auto tariffs on Mexico and Canada are starting to bite U.S. auto makers and will soon hit consumers.
Mr. Trump in March slapped 25% tariffs on autos and parts in the name of protecting national security. Oh no, an invasion of Mexican Chevys! Manufacturers rushed to import parts and stockpile inventory to dodge the tariffs, but they started to face the full tariff impact in July.
Anderson Economic Group reports that tariffs on Canadian and Mexican cars and parts totalled $1.4 billion in July alone, about two and a half times the monthly average through June. Tariff costs jumped even as imports of some product categories fell. The share of Mexican cars exempt from tariffs fell to 20% in July from about 90% before Mr. Trump’s border taxes took effect.
The biggest victims are U.S. auto makers because they rely heavily on North American supply chains.
To see just how economically ignorant are Trump’s advisors on trade, read this piece from a few months ago by John Lettieri on White House trade shaman Peter Navarro’s dismaying comments about the BMW factory in South Carolina’s Upstate. (HT Bryan Riley) Two slices:
So why would one of the president’s top advisors — arguably the person who best reflects Trump’s thinking on trade — describe such a textbook success story as a scam and a threat to national security? Absurd as it may sound, Navarro believes that the profound benefits BMW has delivered to the U.S. economy are somehow outweighed by its reliance on a global supply chain.
That’s literally it. We’re supposed to ignore everything else because — hey, wait, is that a German engine?
And this, in a nutshell, is the logic behind a sweeping new tariff agenda designed to make every foreign input in the American manufacturing process more expensive and harder to obtain.
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What about the company’s supply chain? Like every automaker, BMW does indeed source parts from abroad. But it also relies on a massive U.S. supplier network that it helped to establish, including over 500 suppliers in South Carolina alone. Roughly 70 percent of the steel and aluminum used in BMW’s U.S. production is domestically sourced. (Last year, the company opened a new press shop where it takes raw steel coils and stamps them into sheet metal for its vehicles.)
And the company’s U.S. presence has been a magnet for other companies in the supply chain. Just last year, ZF, another German manufacturer, announced a $500 million investment in the state to build transmissions for BMW and other customers.
Tyler Cowen shares GMU Econ alum Eli Dourado’s wise twitter-thread on trains.
American high-school seniors’ scores on major math and reading tests fell to their lowest levels on record, according to results released Tuesday by the U.S. Education Department.
Twelfth-graders’ average math score was the worst since the current test began in 2005, and reading was below any point since that assessment started in 1992. The share of 12th-graders who were proficient slid by 2 percentage points between 2019 and 2024—to 35% in reading and 22% in math.
There also were drops in the proportion of students who were able to reach at least a basic level of performance, a tier below proficiency.
[DBx: Apologists for the current system of K-12 government schooling will shout “This evidence proves that these schools need more taxpayer money!” Many people will unthinkingly agree. These schools will then get more money. The people who run the schools have hit the cronyist jackpot: They get more of other people’s money the more they fail to do their jobs as educators.]
