MSNBC regular Neal Katyal said Thursday on MSNBC’s “Deadline” that during their arguments before the Washington, D.C.-based Federal Circuit Court of Appeals, President Donald Trump’s lawyers contradicted his executive order imposing tariffs by saying the “large trade deficit” was an emergency when the order states they have been persistent for the last 50 years.
Katyal said, “So, you know, the question today was whether the president, just by his own say so, can impose all these tariffs. And the argument we made was really simple, which was, hey, take a look at the Constitution, Article 1, Section 8, gives the power to Congress to tariff, not to the president. And it’s for a really important reason, you know, going back to the Revolutionary War and the Boston Tea Party and all the fears that our founders had about an unlimited power to tax or tariff our citizens. And here President Trump came in and said, I’m going to impose these tariffs.”
He added, “The emergency that the government lawyers pointed to today was the large trade deficit, and the problem for them is that the law that they’re trying to claim gives the president this authority, says it can only be exercised for extraordinary and unusual things. The president’s own executive order for these tariffs says that I’m doing it because trade deficits have been persistent for the last 50 years. So he kind of pled himself out of court. That’s, I think, one of the problems that came up today with the administration’s defense of what they’re trying to do.”
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