Think The High Court Will Save You From Trump’s 12-Figure Import Taxes? Think Again.

Trump already has the ability to impose replacement tariffs to make up nearly three-quarters of the tax revenue the Supreme Court may strike down as illegal.

WASHINGTON – Businesses and consumers hoping the Supreme Court will soon do away with President Donald Trump’s massive, 12-figure tax increase on imports by striking down his “emergency” tariffs are likely to be disappointed, with administration officials already laying the groundwork to replace them with others.

“That can be done almost immediately,” said Clark Packard, a trade researcher with the Cato Institute.

After returning to office a year ago, Trump quickly jacked up existing tariffs on China, implemented and expanded ones on steel, aluminum and automobiles and then created a novel, never-before-tried import tax based on the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act to hit goods from every country in the world.

The result was a quintupling of the overall average tariff rate, which had been about 2.2% when he took office, and a total tax increase of $181 billion. That figure dwarfs the tax increases under President Barack Obama and ranks as the 13th biggest tax hike since before World War II. Erica York, the vice president for Federal Tax Policy at the conservative-leaning Tax Foundation, said it was the biggest tax increase since 1993.

The Supreme Court is expected to decide as early as this month on Trump’s tariffs based on IEEPA, a law that does not give him that specific authority. At oral arguments in November, most of the justices seemed skeptical of the idea that Trump has the ability to set tariffs according to his whim and without any approval by Congress, which, under the Constitution, is given the sole power of taxation.