WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 President Donald Trump has warned that the United States will be rendered \u201cdefenseless\u2019\u2019 and possibly \u201creduced to almost Third World status\u201d if the Supreme Court strikes down the tariffs he imposed this year on nearly every country on earth.<\/p>\n
The justices sounded skeptical during oral arguments Wednesday<\/a> of his sweeping claims of authority to impose tariffs as he sees fit. <\/p>\n The truth, though, is that Trump will still have plenty of options to keep taxing imports aggressively even if the court rules against him. He can re-use tariff powers he deployed in his first term and can reach for others, including one that dates back to the Great Depression.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s hard to see any pathway here where tariffs end,\u201d said Georgetown trade law professor Kathleen Claussen. \u201cI am pretty convinced he could rebuild the tariff landscape he has now using other authorities.\u201d<\/p>\n At Wednesday\u2019s hearing, in fact, lawyer Neal Katyal, representing small businesses suing to get the tariffs struck down, argued that Trump didn\u2019t need the boundless authority he\u2019s claimed to impose tariffs under 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). That is because Congress delegated tariff power to the White House in several other statutes \u2014 though it carefully limited the ways the president could use the authority. <\/p>\n \u201cCongress knows exactly how to delegate its tariff powers,\u201d Katyal said. <\/p>\n Tariffs have become a cornerstone of Trump\u2019s foreign policy in his second term, with double-digit \u201creciprocal\u201d tariffs imposed on most countries, which he has justified by declaring America\u2019s longstanding trade deficits a national emergency. <\/p>\n The average U.S. tariff has gone from 2.5% when Trump returned to the White House in January to 17.9%, the highest since 1934, according to calculations by Yale University\u2019s Budget Lab.<\/p>\n