Tariffs, power, and a whole lot of legal nonsense

Trump’s lawyer told the Supreme Court tariffs aren’t taxes. The justices didn’t seem to buy it.

Yesterday, I listened to just over half of the oral arguments at the Supreme Court of the United States – yes, live and in real time – listening to the case about the village idiot’s tariffs. I’m not a legal expert, far from it. I don’t keep up with every SCOTUS filing. But once in a while a case catches my interest and I’ll follow along with the live chat commentary from SCOTUSblog while listening to the argument. This was one of those cases.

From my limited vantage point it looked like the government’s argument — led by D. John Sauer, the Solicitor General representing the Trump administration — was just a few points shy of astonishingly reason-deficient. Don’t get me wrong: Sauer is clearly smart, sharp, well-prepared, with an excellent memory and quick on his feet. But his lines of argument? Laughable. At least, to me.