Fox News: Supreme Court Rules that Trump’s Tariffs Are Illegal

EXCERPT:

BREAM: "We’ve got a very fractured opinion, but initially what it says, we know its author, the primary opinion by the chief justice, and says essentially that this IEEPA, this law that grants the president emergency powers did not, it looks like by this first blush reading by the chief justice here, does not give him the power to levy these tariffs that he has levied. Part of this initial opinion says, 'The words regulate an importation. The president said that gives him the independent power to impose tariffs on imports from any country, any product, any rate, any time. These words,' it says, 'can’t bear such weight.' We know we have a dissent by Justice Kavanaugh, by Thomas and Alito, it looks like, and those were the three, we thought, during the arguments, if anyone would be persuaded to allow the president to move forward with these tariffs, they would be the ones to do it. So at first blush, like I said, there are multiple parts and concurrences to this opinion, but it looks like what the primary holding is going to be is that these tariffs cannot be used in the way the president had tried to use them. Let me get you to the closing paragraph that we have in this initial opinion here. It says, 'The president asserts the extraordinary power to unilaterally impose tariffs of unlimited amount, duration and scope in light of the breadth, history and constitutional context to that asserted authority. He must identify clear congressional authorization to exercise it,' meaning if he wants to do it, he has to show that Congress has allowed him to do it. But they say, 'IEEPA, this emergency powers law, contains no reference to tariffs or duties. The government points to no statute and of Congress use the word 'regulate' to authorize taxation, and until now no president has read IEEPA to confer such powers. We claim no special competence in matters of economics or foreign affairs, but we claim, only as we must, the limited role assigned to us by Article III of the Constitution. Fulfilling that role, we hold that IEEPA does not authorize the president to impose tariffs.' We’ll keep reading. That’s the first blush authored by the Chief Justice John Roberts."