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Trump Administration, tariffs, Presidential Power, News
Court Cancels “Liberation Day”
A picture, posted by Trump, is worth a thousand words
On Wednesday, the U.S. Court of International Trade struck down President Trump’s curiously-named “Liberation Day.” Americans were never liberated from anything by Trump on April 2, 2025, the day Trump launched his trade war. Instead, Trump’s war gave us economic uncertainty, the threat of higher prices on many goods and severe shortages of others, and the alienation of many American economic allies.
The war has now been “permanently enjoined” by judicial decree. The court concluded the President did not have the power to impose the tariffs.
A court has stopped what Trump told us couldn’t be.
Read the entire 49-page summary judgment opinion here. It is a primer on the Constitutional authority to impose tariffs.
In part, the court wrote:
Underlying the issues in this case is the notion that “the powers properly belonging to one of the departments ought not to be directly and completely administered by either of the other departments.” Federalist №48 (James Madison). Because of the Constitution’s express allocation of the tariff power to Congress, see U.S. Const…
