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President Donald Trump is imposing tariffs on the world at will, spooking markets and straining alliances. When China announced retaliatory tariffs on US products, Trump made the unilateral decision to double down. The White House now says tariffs will total over 100% on goods imported from China — starting Wednesday.
Whether these levies will kickstart an American manufacturing renaissance is yet to be seen. That process of rewiring the US and world economies will take some time after the tariffs go into effect at midnight on Wednesday. The tariffs will certainly make most of what’s in your local box store more expensive if they are left in effect.
While Trump is claiming broad legal authority to remake the world economy, it’s not at all what the Constitution’s authors envisioned. For the first time during Trump’s second term there is some murmur of blowback from Republicans on Capitol Hill — some of whom want to take some authority away from the president. At least one conservative group is challenging Trump’s authority in court.
Seven Republican senators signed on to a bipartisan bill that would place a check on the tariff authority Congress has given to presidents over the course of decades, which Trump is now using in an unprecedented way.
The bill, sponsored by Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell and Republican Sen. Charles Grassley, would require the White House to justify tariffs and then give lawmakers the opportunity to reject them within 60 days of enactment.
“For too long, Congress has delegated its clear authority to regulate interstate and foreign commerce to the executive branch,” Grassley said in a statement.
Joining Grassley are former Republican leader Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and GOP Sens. Jerry Moran of Kansas, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Todd Young of Indiana and Susan Collins of Maine.
A similar bill is being introduced by Rep. Don Bacon, a Nebraska Republican, in the House of Representatives.
“It’s time that Congress restores its authorities here,” Bacon said on CBS News over the weekend. “We gave some of that power to the executive branch, and I think in hindsight, that was a mistake.”
While there are enough Republican senators on board to work with Democrats on the bill and overcome a filibuster, there still isn’t enough support to reach the 67 votes it would require to override a promised White House veto.
In the House, it might not even be possible to get a vote in the first place — a reality Senate Majority Leader John Thune referred to Monday when he said, dismissively, “I don’t think that has a future.”
It’s also not clear that the lawmakers’ remedy to end tariffs — votes in the House and Senate — would work.
Trump imposed both 10% across-the-board tariffs and more targeted reciprocal tariffs by declaring the trade imbalance to be a national emergency and citing the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), passed in 1977.
He’s using that 1977 emergencies law in conjunction with the 1974 Trade Act, which gave presidents the power to negotiate trade deals with the assent of Congress and to implement the tariffs for a limited time.
Not everyone agrees that Trump’s current interpretation of the law — in which he can impose tariffs by declaring a national emergency — is legitimate.
A libertarian legal group, the New Civil Liberties Alliance, challenged Trump’s tariffs on behalf of Simplified, a Florida home goods company run by the social media influencer Emily Ley.
NCLA was also involved in the lawsuit, filed on behalf of New England fishermen, that led to the end of the Supreme Court’s Chevron deference precedent, which chipped away at executive authority during the Biden administration.
The emergency law through which Trump is imposing tariffs is meant to impose sanctions or freeze assets to protect the US from foreign threats, according to the group.
“It does not authorize the president to impose tariffs. In its nearly 50-year history, no other president — including President Trump in his first term — has ever tried to use the IEEPA to impose tariffs,” according to a statement from NCLA announcing the lawsuit.
The Supreme Court has taken a friendly view, at least so far, of Trump’s claims of executive authority. The high court allowed him, for now, to continue to deport people to El Salvador using an 18th-century law in a ruling Monday, although deportees must now be given an opportunity to challenge their deportation in court.
The Constitution expressly grants Congress the “power to lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises…” and also “To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations… .”
But during World War I, Congress began to cede some of that authority when it gave the president power to regulate trade with enemies.
After the Smoot-Hawley tariff bill helped deepen the Great Depression, lawmakers in 1930 began the process of giving power over tariffs to presidents.
Decades later, after the passage of several more laws, Trump is now claiming essentially complete control to impose tariffs on the entire world at will.
Most taxes — except tariffs — must still go through Congress.
Rep. Josh Gottheimer, a New Jersey Democrat, said Tuesday on “The Situation Room” that Congress needs to reclaim the power and say to Trump, “You’re not using this for emergency purposes; you’re just using it as you see fit, and this is not why the White House was afforded this authority.”
There is also a political argument for Republicans to begin to stand up to the president.
“Business people think long-term, make long-term investments,” Tillis told CNN’s Manu Raju on Tuesday. “The American people think every two years, and they generally reward an administration and Congress that gets us on the right track,” Tillis said, referring to the midterms in 2026 — when he will be up for reelection.
