Harvard Law School professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz said Friday on Newsmax that President Donald Trump’s legal team made the “wrong argument” defending Trump’s tariff authority.
The Supreme Court ruled 6–3 Friday that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act does not authorize Trump to impose tariffs, holding that the statute’s phrase “regulate importation” does not include the distinct and extraordinary power to levy duties absent explicit congressional approval. Dershowitz appeared on “The Record with Greta Van Susteren.”
“I thought that the lawyers for Trump made the wrong argument to the Supreme Court, and I predicted they were going to lose based on their argument. Look, if you argue that it’s fundraising activity by Congress, of course you’re going to lose,” Dershowitz said. “This, the Article One of the Constitution, says that duties and taxes can be imposed only by Congress, and Congress can delegate that authority to the president.”
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“But if you argue that tariffs can be a weapon of foreign policy, a weapon of diplomacy, a weapon of preventing war, then it’s an Article II power of the president, and Congress has no power to limit it. And so I think what the president has said in his press conferences today is that we may have gone under the wrong statute, and maybe we have no power under that statute,” Dershowitz added. “But I want to prevent a war with Iran, and so I’m going to impose a very very steep sanction on Iran, not to raise money but to stop a war. I’m gonna have a big, big, big tariff on, who knows, in order to make sure that they comply with the foreign policy of the United States. Turn this into an Article II, not an Article I, function.”
Dershowitz said the president could still use tariffs as a foreign policy tool, within constitutional limits.
“It becomes within the president’s power, and I think he can still do it within limits. There are things he can’t do,” Dershowitz said. “He can’t tax or impose a duty without congressional delegation, but he can use the tariff as a foreign policy and military and diplomatic weapon.”
Trump initially imposed duties on Canada, China and Mexico in February, tying the move to the fentanyl crisis, before unveiling a second wave of so-called “Liberation Day” trade penalties in April that set 10% tariffs on imported goods and scaled rates higher based on each nation’s trade relationship with the United States. (RELATED: ‘Next Year Will Be Worse’: Some US Businesses Reportedly Ringing Warning Bell Over Trump’s Tariffs)
In August, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed a lower court’s ruling that halted Trump’s tariff policy. The Supreme Court later took up the dispute, hearing arguments in November.
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