This op-ed in the Washington Post suggests that Scott Bessent is an idiot. Surprise!
The Trump administration seems to be catching on to what has been clear for some time: The president’s claim of virtually unlimited, unilateral power to impose tariffs at whatever rate he chooses is in serious legal trouble.
Hence the blustery letter Justice Department officials sent Monday to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which heard arguments on President Donald Trump’s tariffs last month. The letter warned of a second Great Depression if the court pared back Trump’s tariff authority. “In such a scenario … millions of jobs would be eliminated, hard-working Americans would lose their savings, and even Social Security and Medicare could be threatened,” the letter said. “In short, the economic consequences would be ruinous, instead of unprecedented success.”
And hence Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s doth-protest-too-much assertion on Fox Business on Tuesday that Trump’s border taxes will survive the courts because they are raising so much money for the federal government. “The amount of money that’s coming in here — I think the more deals we’ve done, the more money coming in, it gets harder and harder for [the Supreme Court] to rule against us,” Bessent said. He added that tariff income is “well in excess” of $300 billion.
Think about that for a second. At issue in the tariff case is whether the president is usurping Congress’s power to tax. And the treasury secretary is pointing out that the tax is so large that the courts can’t possibly find that the president has exceeded his power. That has it backward.
The power to raise revenue for the government belongs to Congress. As James Madison wrote in the Federalist Papers, “The legislative department alone has access to the pockets of the people.” Tariffs are taxes paid by U.S. importers — individuals and companies — to Customs and Border Protection, which then gives the money to the U.S. treasury. If Trump is ordering Americans to pay huge sums of money without clear authorization from Congress, that ought to heighten judicial scrutiny of whether the taxes are legal.
This article assumes that the courts will be restrained by logic and that’s not guaranteed. But if they are, this shows that the administration’s rationales for their tariffs are nonsensical. We knew that, of course. But it’s good to see it spelled out in the Washington Post. Maybe some judges will read it.