After the U.S. Court of International Trade (CIT) decided that the president does not have unilateral power to declare a trade war on the world, Stephen Miller, President Trump’s Deputy Chief of Staff, proclaimed (see #1), “The judicial coup is out of control.” What Millerite rubbish.
Miller’s feral reaction had resonance at a time when courts were inventing “rights” and making law out of whole judicial cloth. That was the time of the imperial judiciary, and rightly condemned. Not now, at a time of a 6-3 originalist, conservative majority.
Now, we’re in the era of new imperium, that of the imperial presidency. So, what do we call it when Trump with a stroke of his pen declares a trade “emergency” against the planet? The tariff power unquestionably resides with Congress in Art. I, Sec. 8. It’s nice to hear a court – The U.S. Court of International Trade – return to the literal, original, and simple meaning of the law and The Constitution. There is no place in our rule of law for Obama’s phone and pen, Biden’s edicts on rent moratoriums and student loans, and his wanton dereliction of duty to enforce immigration law, and now Trump’s decrees on tariffs on anyone, at any time, at any rate, for almost any reason – just declare an “emergency”.
But not so fast. The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued a stay (a stop order) of the CIT decision in V.O.S. Selections v. Trump to give time for the Trump people and the plaintiffs to present their appellate briefs.
Well, let’s clear this up right now. Who are the plaintiffs, the people who brought suit? They aren’t your typical eco-lefties or your run-of-the-mill identity group hustlers angling for more privileges and taxpayer-funded bennies. They are folks who have a conception of government more in line with the Founders, people who seek to have The Constitution applied as written. Their creed stems from James Madison, not Karl Marx. They are free market, limited government people.
Spearheading this suit against His Majesty Donald Trump is the Liberty Justice Center (LJC), not the ACLU or the radically leftist Southern Poverty Law Center. The Liberty Justice Center’s mission is to “challenge the latest and greatest threats to liberty across the country” and strives to “revitalize constitutional restraints on government power and protections for individual rights” (see #2). The LJC stepped up to the plate to defend VOS Selections (importer of wines and spirits), FishUSA (fishing tackle producer), Genova Pipe (producer of irrigation and plumbing supplies), MicroKits (producer of electronics kits), and Terry Precision Cycling (producers of bicycles and cycling accessories) to stop Trump’s tariffs from driving them into bankruptcy.
LJC is doing for them what they did for Mark Janus before the U.S. Supreme Court in the famous Janus v. AFSCME decision of 2018 which reaffirmed the freedom of an individual public employee to not join a union. Today, it’s the freedom to stay in business without having to face the existential threat of arbitrary and capricious actions of a national executive straying far outside his constitutional lane.
Trump relies on the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 (IEEPA), within the National Emergencies Act, in the same manner as the Democrats worship the Constitution’s commerce and necessary and proper clauses to bring down on our heads the bloated Leviathan, the same one that has jacked our economy, our lives, our national debt, our kids’ schools, our neighborhoods, our housing, our girls’ sports, etc. IEEPA grants to the president certain economic powers only during an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to the nation. Thus, Trump is sharing the same ideological space with AOC, Bernie Sanders, The Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth, Elizabeth Warren, The Squad, and Karl Marx . . . if he was still around to mingle in Democratic Party confabs.
So, what’s the “unusual and extraordinary threat” to justify the power grab, according to Trump? Think about it. The “emergency” lies in the commonplace business arrangements that have been around for the past 40+ years, if not longer. Now that’s odd: a 40-year-old “unusual and extraordinary threat”. At what point in a time span does “normal” suddenly become an “emergency”? If he wants to bring back those $17/hour factory jobs in droves, bring back his glorious 1950s, he ought to work with Congress to throw up the protectionist walls, shower taxpayer funds on a few favorites, and possibly muzzle the eco-predators that are actually busy making a hash of our economy. Policy is the proper response, not imperial ukases. But try to get that through a Congress of razor thin majorities. In other words, in our constitutional order, there is no mandate for Trump central planning.
Once we clear away the MAGA rubbish talk and get our bearings, governance by imperial whim is not becoming of Lincoln’s last best hope of earth. The sloganeering America First is verily America Ruined. The least that we can do to rescue our reputation as a free people of a free country is to retain some sense of the rule of law. Let’s hope that we have a Supreme Court who agrees.
RogerG
Sources:
1. “The Sudden End to Tariffs and the TACO Trade”, Jim Geraghty, National Review, 5/29/2025, at https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-jolt/the-sudden-end-to-tariffs-and-the-taco-trade/
2. Liberty Justice Center, “What We Do”, on their official website at https://libertyjusticecenter.org/about/