President Donald Trump is on a tariff spree — and it’s unclear if Congress will try to stop him even as it has the potential power to do so.  Many agree and some fear him.

     Trump unveiled a nearly global tariff regime, slapping a blanket 10% duty on almost every country on the planet and saddling dozens of them with significantly higher tariff rates.  The sweeping policy pronouncement promptly torpedoed stocks in the U.S. and around the world, ratcheting up recession fears and triggering aggressive retaliation by China. The new U.S. import duties follow other protectionist policies that Trump, who champions tariffs as an economic cure-all, has rolled out since taking office in January.

     Trump’s executive order implementing his so-called reciprocal tariffs says that he derives his authority for the action from four sources in the United States Code. Among them are the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and the National Emergency Act. A president using those laws in tandem can declare an emergency and then impose related tariffs.  The order declared a national emergency in response to what it called an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to America’s economy and security.

     That threat is based on “the domestic economic policies of key trading partners and structural imbalances in the global trading system,” the order says. Trump is the first president to use the IEEPA to impose tariffs, according to the Congressional Research Service.  He first invoked the law in February when he announced new tariffs on Canada, Mexico, and China.  

     Under the U.S. Constitution, the power to tax and tariff falls squarely within the legislative branch.  Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution states, “The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises,” as well as, “To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations.”  But Congress has enacted laws giving the president some tariff powers. And courts have generally upheld that authority.

     In the early days of the United States, tariffs were the government’s primary source of revenue.  Even after the 16th Amendment, ratified in 1913, implemented the federal income tax, tariffs remained in effect. After the economic one-two-punch of the Great Depression and the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, however, Congress gave the president some leeway over tariffs.  “The primary reason was, it was unwieldy for them,” Scott Bomboy, editor in chief of the National Constitution Center, said in a phone interview, referring to lawmakers.  There are now at least six federal statutes delegating some tariff authorities to the president, according to the Congressional Research Service.