Trump Is About to Find Out What It’s Like to Be a Democrat

“Why do you think Presidents Clinton, Bush, [or] Obama have not used IEEPA to impose tariffs?” the justice asked Sauer at one point. “Because there have been trade disputes and, certainly, you know, President Bush, steel imports, and the like. Why do you think IEEPA has not been used?”

Sauer replied that his team had looked through almost 70 different declared national emergencies and concluded that it was “really hard” to find one that would be a “natural tool” to address that emergency. “Take, you know, the Iranian hostage crisis,” Sauer explained. “President Carter didn’t say, ‘Oh, you seized all of our Embassy personnel, you’re holding them hostage, we’re going to tariff you.’”

President Donald Trump initially tied the tariffs in question in this case to genuine but unrelated crises, such as fentanyl overdoses, or exaggerated and misunderstood ones, like U.S. trade imbalances. Since then, the White House has only become more freewheeling with its rationales for IEEPA tariffs. As time has gone on, these have become increasingly unmoored from any possible interpretation of a national emergency. Again, it was Sotomayor who had to provide a reality check.