MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
The U.S. Supreme Court has struck down much of President Trump's tariff regimen. The 6-3 decision, which was written by Chief Justice John Roberts, is a major blow to the president's signature economic policy. It's also a rare rebuke by this court of the executive branch. Joining us now to talk about this is NPR's Nina Totenberg. Nina, good morning.
NINA TOTENBERG, BYLINE: Good morning, Michel.
MARTIN: Nina, I know this is a lengthy opinion, and you're still probably going through it. But what does this opinion do?
TOTENBERG: Basically, it blows President Trump's broad tariff assertions - power - broad power assertions that he has the right to make huge tariff decisions without the express consent of Congress - it blows that whole assertion right out of the water. It's a huge setback for the administration. And, you know, one wonders what it's like in the White House at the moment, but probably, he's pretty mad.
MARTIN: What - how did this case start?
TOTENBERG: Well, he imposed these big, big, big tariffs on all kinds of countries, and the tariffs kept changing. And, of course, small-business people sued because they had to pay the tariffs. That's who pays the tariffs when you impose tariffs. It's the importer and the exporter, both. It's the person in the United States. So they sued, and they won big-time.
Writing for the court's majority, Roberts said that Trump lacked the peacetime authority to use this law, which is called - it's referred to as IEEPA - to impose tariffs. And he referred to the Revolution and the start of the United States of America, saying that much of that revolution was based on an objection to being taxed, and therefore, the framers put in the Constitution - in the very first provision, it said what the powers of Congress were and the powers of Congress were to tax. And unless - and that imports and exports are taxes and - have taxes and that, therefore, if a president wants to impose a tax, a big tariff or any sort of major tariff, Congress has to expressly authorize it.
He said, in light of the breadth, history and constitutional context of the president's - of the - the -that authority, the president must identify clear congressional authorization to exercise the power to impose tariffs. Trump had argued that persistent trade imbalances and the flood of fentanyl coming into the country presented national emergencies and posed a threat to national security. And the six-member court majority simply didn't buy that argument.
MARTIN: I understand that you...
TOTENBERG: Go ahead.
MARTIN: I understand that you're still sorting through the various concurrences and dissents. I just looking through the opinion myself, I see that there are a number of sort of interesting groupings there. But the 6-3 majority was comprised of the chief justice, John Roberts, as you've told us, Justice Amy Coney Barrett and Justice Neil Gorsuch, and then they were joined by the court's three liberals. So is the center of gravity of this that they feel that the executive exceeded its authority here?
TOTENBERG: I think that's a fair assessment. And, you know, much of the fight - and the fight goes on for hundreds of pages on both sides of the aisle, so to speak. Much of the fight is about doctrinal questions that we don't have the time and maybe not the inclination to discuss today. But the essence of the 6-to-3 majority was telling the president, you can't do this without the express authority of Congress. And he did. And so now he has to go back to the drawing board. There are some statutes in which he does have express authority from Congress. They tend to be more limited. They tend to have more restrictions in time, but they are available, and he'll undoubtedly try.
Interestingly, as Justice Kavanaugh, who wrote the principal dissent, said, what is unanswered is whether the people who have paid these tariffs - the businessmen and women - whether they are going to get their money back. And if they are going to get their money back, I think, as Scott Horsley once told me, it's going to be messy, but it's doable. There are computers that can figure out who paid what, and the federal government will have to pay them - if they win the next case, the federal government would have to pay those business people back to the tune of billions and billions of dollars.
MARTIN: So before we bring Scott Horsley in - we're going to hear more about the economic impact from him - what's next in this case? Is there another iteration of this? Is there another phase of this?
TOTENBERG: Well, I think they've pretty much given their word on this. The next phase is really to determine whether people get their money back when they've paid tariffs that the Supreme Court has now found to be unconstitutional.
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