President Donald Trump’s angry, unhinged rant on Truth Social over this week’s judicial ruling against his tariffs is getting attention for its fury at Leonard Leo, the mastermind of the conservative takeover of the courts. Trump blamed the Federalist Society—which Leo championed—for the ruling, in which two judges appointed by GOP presidents, including Trump himself, found that Trump’s tariffs dramatically overstepped his presidential authority.
That’s absurd: The judge that Trump appointed to the three-judge U.S. Court of International Trade—which issued the ruling—has protectionist sympathies, yet even he saw the tariffs as illegal. What’s more, the Federalist Society—and Leo—have helped shape today’s Supreme Court, which enabled Trump to evade accountability for his insurrection, making his 2024 victory possible.
But I’d like to highlight something else in Trump’s tirade because it constitutes an actual argument on his part about his exercise of unilateral power on tariffs. Trump said this:
The horrific decision stated that I would have to get the approval of Congress for these Tariffs. In other words, hundreds of politicians would sit around D.C. for weeks, and even months, trying to come to a conclusion as to what to charge other Countries that are treating us unfairly. If allowed to stand, this would completely destroy Presidential Power—The Presidency would never be the same!
“Under this decision, Trillions of Dollars would be lost by our Country,” Trump fumed. “The President of the United States must be allowed to protect America against those that are doing it Economic and Financial harm.”
Here Trump derides the very idea that Congress should have a good deal of authority over the levying of tariffs. Trump claims this can’t apply in the case of his new tariffs because it prevents him from acting to protect the country in an emergency. In this case, that emergency is the one Trump has invoked—our trade deficits—to appropriate for himself virtually unlimited power to levy sweeping taxes on products imported from all over the world.
This is what the court ruled illegal (though the tariffs can proceed for now). It found that the relevant statute—the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977, or IEEPA—doesn’t afford Trump this authority at all. The statute doesn’t mention “tariffs” as a remedy for emergencies, and it requires that emergencies pose an “extraordinary and unusual threat,” which trade deficits simply do not.
But that aside, in saying all this, Trump is openly declaring that he should have the power to circumvent Congress in levying these tariffs to address emergencies. Yet as Trump himself demonstrates here, in claiming this authority, he’s invoking an emergency that is not real. Trillions of dollars are not being “lost” by our country due to trade deficits, as his rant proclaims. That is not how trade deficits work, and they certainly do not constitute “emergencies.” As Trump’s tirade plainly shows, he made up the “emergency” to grant himself extraordinarily sweeping authorities.
All this demonstrates exactly why we want Trump to subject himself to Congress’s directives in the first place. The key point to understand here is that Congress did delegate the president some powers over trade, but it circumscribed those powers. The IEEPA gave the president some authorities to act on economic emergencies. But Trump acted outside those authorities. As the ruling puts it, the statute “only” allows Trump to “deal with an unusual and extraordinary threat” but “not” for “any other purpose,” and Trump’s tariffs “do not meet that condition.” They do not address an “unusual and extraordinary threat” at all.
In his rant, Trump explicitly equates these lawful limits imposed on his powers by Congress—and upheld by judges—with the total destruction of presidential authority. Letting this ruling stand, he rages, would “completely destroy Presidential Power.” In other words, preserving presidential power by definition means not accepting such lawful limits on it.
“Congress did not intend to set up a trade dictator where all tariff rates can be changed on a whim by simply declaring a national emergency,” Dartmouth professor Douglas Irwin, the author of many books about trade, told me.
The broader aim here is obvious, and even Trump-appointed judges are taking note of it. There’s the current ruling on tariffs joined by a Trump appointee. And another federal judge picked by Trump recently blocked his deportations under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act by sharply contesting his claim that we’re under “invasion” by a hostile foreign power, as the statute requires. This ruling said that letting Trump “unilaterally define” when an invasion is underway simply by decree—without regard to facts—thus justifying suspension of due process would “remove all limitations” to Trump’s authority.
To which top Trump adviser Stephen Miller in effect replied: You’re damn right. That’s exactly what we want:
Stephen Miller says they are “actively looking at” suspending the writ of habeas corpus, which is only allowed when the US has been invaded or during an insurrection, which would not allow people to challenge their incarceration in court if they are arrested and detained. pic.twitter.com/vK3ELIMoYj
— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) May 9, 2025You see, Trump can suspend habeas corpus if we’re under invasion, which he can simply make true by decree. Judges should “do the right thing” by affirmatively ratifying that power, or be warned: Trump just might assume it for himself.
What’s really at issue here is whether Trump can simply pull “emergencies” out of his rear to assume dictatorial powers for himself. The court is saying, No, you can’t. Trump’s rant basically says: Yes, I can.
The real reason Trump and his minions are raging at the courts is that they want that latter proposition to be the controlling one—which, not incidentally, would make great strides toward making his power to tyrannize over us quasi-absolute. That is their project, and they’re not even hiding it anymore. The only question at this point is whether they succeed—or whether we stop them.
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