President Trump used the State of the Union to call on Congress to grant him more power on tariffs by passing the United States Reciprocal Trade Act:
But handing the president more powers to levy taxes will not promote free trade or make America more prosperous. As Trump has demonstrated, those powers can and will be used to pick fights with allies and to start trade wars, and they will be exercised at the expense of the U.S. economy.
Handing the president those powers would also undercut the authority granted to Congress in the Constitution to “lay and collect taxes [and] duties” and “to regulate commerce with foreign nations.”
The Reciprocal Trade Act would instead ensure the executive has unilateral ability to levy tariffs without either congressional approval or even the national security justifications that underpin currently imposed tariffs. The result, especially given Trump’s penchant to negotiate with new tariffs, would be more taxes on Americans.
Luckily, lawmakers seem unlikely to grant the president’s ask.
Already, a bipartisan group of senators is working not only to block further acquisition of presidential tariff power, but to claw back his existing powers with a bill known as the Bicameral Congressional Trade Authority Act.
The legislation, introduced by Sens. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., and Mark Warner, D-Va., would mandate congressional approval to impose trade restrictions based on national security justifications. It would also give the power to determine those justifications to the Defense Department, rather than the Commerce Department, and narrowly limit items that could be considered for such trade restrictions to those plausibly linked to national defense.
Another similar bill will likely be reintroduced by Sens. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, and Doug Jones, D-Ala., which would, although less stringent, still significantly limit the president’s power on tariffs.
Those bipartisan bills signal both a growing wariness to allow Trump to continue to wage unchecked trade wars and an understanding that tariffs are a blunt tool that is destructive to the domestic economy.
For Trump, that means that despite his ask on the big stage of the State of the Union, lawmakers aren’t likely to take his pitch to fruition. In fact, they might do just the opposite and take back some of their rightful power on trade.
