The Wall Street Journal Calls for Someone to ‘Sue’ Trump Over Tariffs: Treating the Economy as a ‘Personal Plaything’

The Wall Street Journal argued that “someone should sue” the Trump administration over the massive tariffs it has imposed on Mexico and Canada, excoriating President Donald Trump for treating the North American economy as his “personal plaything” in a new editorial.

Under the headline “Trump’s Tariffs Are No ‘Emergency’” and subheading “The President invokes a law that doesn’t give him power to impose sweeping tariffs. Someone should sue,” the Journal took Trump to task:

President Trump delayed his Mexico-Canada tariffs again on Thursday—this time for another month. He’s treating the North American economy as a personal plaything, as markets gyrate with each presidential whim. It’s doubtful Mr. Trump even has the power to impose these tariffs, and we hope his afflatus gets a legal challenge.

The Constitution gives power over trade to Congress, which for most of U.S. history wrote tariff law. That changed after the catastrophe of the 1930 Smoot-Hawley tariff, as Congress said stop us before we kill the economy again and ceded authority to the President to negotiate bilateral trade deals. It ceded more power after World War II.

The editorial continued:

Mr. Trump’s executive orders imposing 25% across-the-board tariffs on Canada and Mexico and 10% (now 20%) on China instead invoke the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), which gives the President authority to address an “unusual and extraordinary threat” if he declares a national emergency. Mr. Trump deems fentanyl and other drugs such an emergency.

IEEPA’s language is intentionally broad to give the President latitude to address wide-ranging threats. But Mr. Trump’s tariffs arguably constitute a “‘fundamental revision of the statute, changing it from [one sort of] scheme of . . . regulation’ into an entirely different kind,” to quote the Supreme Court’s West Virginia v. EPA precedent distilling its major questions doctrine.

Under that ruling, Congress must expressly authorize economically and politically significant executive actions, which Mr. Trump’s tariffs undeniably are. Whether fentanyl is an unusual and extraordinary threat is debatable, however, since drugs have been pouring across the borders for decades.

“Mr. Trump’s tariffs recall Mr. Biden’s use of emergency power for his Covid vaccine mandate, eviction moratorium and student loan forgiveness. The Court blocked all three under its major questions doctrine, which Justice Neil Gorsuch called ‘a vital check on expansive and aggressive assertions of executive authority,’” observed the Journal.

“Presidents of both parties are now declaring everything to be an emergency to achieve their policy goals without having to deal with a frustrating Congress,” it concluded. “If Mr. Trump succeeds in unilaterally imposing tariffs as he sees fit, a future Democratic President will use ’emergency’ power for climate change and much more. Mr. Trump’s order needs a legal challenge.”