Dan Wolff, partner with Crowell & Moring, joined "Forbes Newsroom" to discuss if President Trump can set tariffs.
Category
đź—ž
NewsTranscript
00:00Well, of course, the procedural issues affect everything else. It's a ripple effect. And in looking at this suit that was filed yesterday from the Liberty Justice Center, I'm looking at a quote that I would love to get your take on.
00:13The suit, the filing says, quote, the president's justification does not meet the standards set forth in IEPA. His claimed emergency is a figment of his own imagination. Trade deficits, which have persisted for decades without causing economic harm, are not an emergency. Dan, what do you make of that part of yesterday's suit?
00:34Well, I mean, as a matter of common sense, I get it. And it's a rational argument to make. I would say, though, that debating with the president over whether there's a national emergency or not is really a distraction, which is not to say it's not a meritorious argument.
00:56But I don't think it goes to the ultimate issue of the president's legal authority, because we can we can debate whether there's a national emergency.
01:05And I take the point from this set of plaintiffs to be that it's all pretextual. There really is no national emergency, at least one that's cognizable under IEPA.
01:14And that this is just sort of a setup to try to impose a tariff regime to further the policy objectives of this administration.
01:23But it's not anchored to the statute itself. We can debate that. And it's a fair debate.
01:28But ultimately, it doesn't answer the question of whether the president can do this or not.
01:32It does go to whether the statute authorizes this and in this particular way.
01:39But the constitutional question at the end of the day remains, even if even if the president has checked the boxes for determining a national emergency,
01:48does he does he does he have that separate and I would say stand alone authority to set tariffs?
01:55And that to me is the harder I think the harder position for this government for this administration to justify is is to say that it can actually whatever it says about national emergency,
02:05it can set tariffs as it has done both dating to the February executive orders and then more recently in the April executive orders.
02:14I see. So there are really two questions here. Is it can the administration do this under emergency measures?
02:20And then can what is the administration legally and constitutionally able to do under normal circumstances?
02:27Yeah. And just to just to put to punctuate what I just said is we could even stip and I'm not stipulating, you know,
02:35but I'm just saying if one were to stipulate for the sake of argument that there is a national emergency,
02:40that's still, in my view, as a matter of constitutional law, doesn't justify the tariffs that have been set.
02:46And so I think however you however you slice the salami here, this lawsuit is a is a strong one.
02:54And if they don't prevail on the statutory question, you know, they should prevail on the constitutional question.