Ben Shapiro says the Court of International Trade “isn't wrong” in striking down Trump's tariffs
Shapiro: “You don't want any president being able to unilaterally simply decide that there are massive tariffs across the board on all of America's trading partners. You just don't want that.”
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From the May 29, 2025, edition of The Daily Wire's The Ben Shapiro Show
BEN SHAPIRO (HOST): The Court of International Trade, which is a court that nobody has ever heard of, blocked President Trump's tariffs.
In a sweeping ruling, according to Reuters, that found the president overstepped his authority by imposing across the board duties on imports from US trading partners, the court essentially suggested that the law under which the president of the United States was declaring these tariffs was not, in fact, capable of carrying those tariffs because, essentially, the president used the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977, the IEEPA. It gives the president the power to regulate imports during certain emergency situations according to CBS News, but those emergency situations do not actually extend to things like, you know, a trade deficit. Big trade deficits do not amount to a national emergency, and that's what the court found. And the court isn't wrong here.
If the president actually wants to do tariffs, there are other legal mechanisms presumably that he will pursue, but this should be in the purview of Congress. It always should have been in the purview of Congress. You don't want any president being able to unilaterally simply decide that there are massive tariffs across the board on all of America's trading partners. You just don't want that. OK?
That is not the balance of powers that was envisioned by the Constitution, by the founders, by the framers. That is not what they wanted. It's not something that I want either. And whether you like the tariffs or you don't like the tariffs is actually sort of irrelevant to the question of whether the president ought to have the unilateral ability to do as President Trump did on Liberation Day and simply declare a 46% tariff on Vietnam or a 145% tariff on China. Like, the Congress should have to sign in at some point.