When Judges Aid China: The Real Cost of Gutting Trump's Tariff Strategy

The decision handed down on May 28, 2025, by the US Court of International Trade to strike down President Donald Trump’s so-called "Liberation Day" tariffs is not merely an error in statutory interpretation. It is a dereliction of judicial duty and a gift-wrapped concession to the very foreign powers that seek to undermine American sovereignty and security. The court’s ruling misapprehends the nature of presidential power in national emergencies, fails to appreciate the strategic utility of tariffs in foreign policy, and threatens to hamstring an executive branch constitutionally tasked with protecting the republic from foreign harm. Worse still, the decision has been greeted with unconcealed glee in Beijing. That alone should give sober Americans pause.

To understand the legal controversy, one must first grasp the statute at issue: the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), passed in 1977. Historically used to impose sanctions, the law vests the President with authority to regulate, block, or prohibit financial transactions and trade in times of national emergency. Critics claim the statute was never intended to authorize tariffs. But that narrow reading ignores the statutory text and the broader logic of emergency powers. If a president may freeze assets and prohibit trade altogether, why should he not be allowed to impose duties as a calibrated response?

President Trump invoked IEEPA to declare twin national emergencies: first, the existential threat posed by America’s ballooning trade deficit, and second, the crisis of synthetic opioids, chiefly fentanyl, flooding US cities through China, Mexico, and Canada. The former, he rightly noted, hollows out the defense industrial base, decimates working-class communities, and renders the nation dependent on adversarial supply chains. The latter, a public health emergency of staggering scope, kills more Americans annually than any war since Vietnam. On both counts, the connection to national security is self-evident.

In response, the administration imposed a 10 percent baseline tariff on most imports, with higher reciprocal rates for serial trade abusers like China, initially 145 percent, later adjusted to 30 percent in negotiations. The purpose was not protectionism for its own sake. Rather, tariffs functioned as leverage to bring trading partners to the negotiating table. And it worked. Within weeks, Chinese negotiators signaled new willingness to curb fentanyl exports and allow greater access to Chinese markets for American firms. This, not judicial nicety, is how diplomacy is conducted when adversaries respect strength.

Yet the court declared such measures impermissible. Why? Because, according to the panel, IEEPA does not explicitly grant the president power to impose tariffs. This reading is not merely cramped. It is internally incoherent. The statute permits the president to prohibit all imports from a hostile nation, but, bizarrely, not to tax them? A president may block a transaction entirely, but not impose a fee upon it? This is legal formalism run amok. Worse, it privileges judicial parsing over constitutional responsibility.

The court’s opinion also dismisses the emergencies declared by President Trump as insufficiently connected to the measures enacted. Yet the Constitution does not assign the judiciary the role of second-guessing the wisdom of emergency declarations. That authority lies with the executive, and ultimately with Congress. The Trump administration rightly argued that the identification of national emergencies and the manner of addressing them are political questions, unsuitable for judicial review. The political question doctrine exists precisely to prevent the courts from substituting their policy preferences for those of the elected branches.

Some have argued that Trump’s use of tariffs under IEEPA was a novel and therefore illegitimate move. But novelty is not illegality. All legal innovation is novel until tested. Indeed, the very structure of the IEEPA contemplates flexibility, permitting the president to "take such actions with respect to any property... as he may deem necessary" in the context of national emergencies. That sweeping language does not exclude tariffs, and courts have long recognized that statutory ambiguity in matters of national security must be resolved in favor of executive discretion.

Moreover, the administration’s actions enjoyed both practical justification and policy coherence. The US trade deficit stood at over $1.2 trillion in goods, a staggering figure that reflects not just bad economics but a dangerous dependency on foreign production. Meanwhile, more than 70,000 Americans died from fentanyl overdoses in the last recorded year. Can a government that fails to respond to such numbers be said to take its national security duties seriously?

Nor were these tariffs mere rhetorical flourishes. They brought China to the negotiating table. They incentivized Mexico to bolster border inspections. They forced global firms to rethink overreliance on adversarial markets. In sum, they worked. That the court would now declare them retroactively illegal not only invalidates this progress but risks paralyzing future presidents who seek to act decisively in the national interest.

One might object: if the president has such sweeping authority under IEEPA, where are the limits? The answer is straightforward. Congress retains oversight. The National Emergencies Act allows Congress to terminate any emergency declaration by joint resolution. If Congress disapproves of the president’s judgment, it has ample power to act. But that is a political remedy, not a judicial one. The courts were never meant to play umpire in matters that turn on realpolitik.

Indeed, the court’s intervention has broader implications for the structure of constitutional governance. It elevates unelected judges above the elected branches on questions of national security. It disables a vital tool of negotiation in a world increasingly defined by economic coercion. And it sends a message to foreign adversaries: if you bide your time, America’s own institutions will undermine its resolve.

China understands this. Their state-run press wasted no time celebrating the court’s ruling. That alone should make every American pause. When our enemies cheer our courts, something is amiss. The judiciary, in this case, did not act as a guardian of liberty, but as an inadvertent ally of those who seek our decline.

If this decision is allowed to stand, it will do more than erase one set of tariffs. It will enshrine judicial veto power over executive strategy. It will embolden foreign governments to stall, obfuscate, and delay, knowing that American courts may intervene to rescue them. And it will render future emergency powers inert at the precise moment they are needed most.

The Trump administration has already appealed. The stakes are immense. At issue is not just one policy, but the integrity of the executive’s constitutional role. A reversal would reaffirm that presidents can, and must, act decisively in times of national danger. The alternative is paralysis, judicial overreach, and strategic impotence. For a nation besieged by foreign drugs, foreign deficits, and foreign duplicity, that is a price we cannot afford to pay.

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