Trump, his tariffs, the law and the Supreme Court

 

The law can 'decide' the question of whether POTUS has the 'power' to impose tariffs but cannot settle the issue. 

That is because it is, finally, a political, not a legal dispute; it puts democracy and the law - that is, the existence of legal restraints on democracy - at odds.

Trump and his legal advisers are well aware of this but will continue to press their case because they do not believe in liberal democracy and accept the spirit of the law (or to be exact about Trump's attorneys, because they are commissioned to challenge those concepts). They are advocating together a form of fascism: elective dictatorship.

The only way the Supreme Court - if the matter gets that far - seems to have round this is to take the Constitutional view of the separation of the powers and decline to hear the case.

Whether Trump has the power to impose tariffs, or the power to do anything else he likes, can only be settled by whether American voters continue to support him. That is, whether they let him.

That's the reality. That's democracy. What other choice is there?