The trade fight with our neighbors is mostly costs and very little in the way of benefits.

H ow do I hate President Trump’s capricious levying of tariffs? Let me count the ways. They are constitutionally suspect, statutorily usurpative, diplomatically toxic, and culturally chaotic; they represent a profound political risk for the new administration — the potential upsides of which are insufficient to warrant the gamble; and, in both form and implementation, they serve as precisely the sort of insult to our balanced system of government that the Framers of our civic order disdained. To adapt the prayer of St. Francis, the practice brings discord where we need harmony, error where we desire truth, and doubt where we aspire to faith. It is an ugly imposition — and a needless one at that.

Donald Trump was elected because the voting public correctly believed that the Biden administration had ushered in disastrous inflation, caused a terrible crisis at the border, and promulgated loony social theories that lacked public support. During the campaign, Trump and his team relentlessly hit Kamala Harris for her role in elevating the price of food, housing, energy, and other economic staples, as well as for focusing in on fringe concerns about which no normal person cared. Some of these criticisms were fair, and some were not, but, irrespective of their veracity, the line of attack proved so effective that, by the time that the election arrived, Americans had come to look back on the prosperity of 2019 as the ideal to which they wished to return. If, instead, they get a series of transitory trade wars that lack both casus belli and apprehensible explanation, they will start looking elsewhere for relief.

Exactly why the Trump administration has embarked upon this course remains unclear. To my eyes, the logic tracks the protean rules of Calvinball: Trump believes that tariffs are good, so he has imposed or threatened to impose tariffs, which will inevitably have salutary effects, because tariffs or the threat of tariffs are good. If something happens between Trump imposing tariffs and rescinding the imposition of tariffs, then that something must have been because of the tariffs — which are so bad that they serve as a potent weapon (already, a border-related concession from Mexico is serving this argument). If nothing happens between Trump imposing tariffs and rescinding the imposition of tariffs, then at least we got some tariffs — which, as President McKinley demonstrated, and as we know from our “trade deficit” and lack of American-made goods, are a good in and of themselves.

Apologists for Trump dispute this characterization, proposing that tariffs give the United States “leverage,” which it is using to . . . well, there’s the rub. That part seems to be made up on the fly. Not only did Trump’s latest order apply more strictly to our allies, Mexico and Canada, than to our adversary, China, but it is not at all obvious how the proximate impetus that Trump is obliged to cite — this time, it was the continued scourge of fentanyl on America’s streets, but it varies — is connected to his coveted remedies. Neither, as a more general matter, is it clear what is wrong with the status quo, given that its guiding framework — the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement Implementation Act — was negotiated by Donald Trump, signed into law by Donald Trump, and championed by Donald Trump as a “tremendous victory,” as the “largest, most significant, modern, and balanced trade agreement in history,” and as a win for “hardworking Americans.” Prior to his new tariffs going into effect, Trump told reporters that there was “nothing” the countries to which they applied could do to prevent them — which means that, in effect, Trump has supplanted his own bipartisan bill with a series of start-stop unilateral edicts that boast no explanatory support. “Leverage,” apparently, has become a synonym for inconstancy.

One of the core purposes of the U.S. Constitution is the prevention of monarchical whimsy. It is for this reason that the document vests the lawmaking power in Congress rather than in the presidency, and why the legislature, not the executive, is accorded the “power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises,” and all other fundraising apparatus. Since 1928, the Supreme Court has permitted some delegation of the “duties” power to the executive, but only in such cases as that delegation contains an “intelligible principle.” As a foundational constitutional matter, I remain extremely skeptical that this standard can be squared with the earlier confirmation that “all legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States.” But, even if it can, I cannot see how the statute that President Trump is using — or the manner in which he is using it — would pass that doctrinal test. Under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), the president may impose tariffs if there exists “any unusual and extraordinary threat, which has its source in whole or substantial part outside the United States, to the national security, foreign policy, or economy of the United States, if the President declares a national emergency with respect to such threat.” If, in practice, this means that the president has been accorded carte blanche to impose any tariffs he wants, contingent upon nothing more than his own declaration of an “emergency,” then there is no limit upon his power, and there is no “principle” to speak of — “intelligible” or otherwise.

Historically, the utilitarian case made in favor of the delegation of the tariff power was that the presidency was less likely to be corrupt, self-dealing, and parochial than was Congress, and that it thus made sense to put the legislature’s negotiating powers in his hands. Markets operate best when their terms are stable, predictable, comprehensible to the average citizen, and lacking in jury-rigged exemptions that have been inserted to placate well-connected foes. If handing over authority to the White House created that outcome, this theory held, then the argument in its favor was self-evident. Perhaps, at one point, this was true. Evidently, though, it is no longer the case. Nearly a century has elapsed between the Supreme Court blessing Congress’s abdication of power, and our new status quo which has the president of the United States imposing arbitrary tariffs at arbitrary rates for arbitrary periods of time for arbitrary reasons, while members of the legislative branch that has the capacity to stop him issue “pleas” that call for their constituents to be granted a narrow exemption. This is absurd, and it ought to remind us of the ineluctable risk that comes along with any transfer of power between assemblies and individuals. Sometimes, the king is a wise, humble, judicious sort of man — and sometimes he’s absolutely bonkers.