Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick was asked about the US Court of International Trade ruling against Trump’s illegal tariffs, and came up with this doozy as their latest excuse to try to ignore the courts.
The White House initially had a meltdown over the ruling, saying “the courts should have no role here,” and attacked the court, one of whom was appointed by Trump, as being rogue judges, before an appeals court paused the ruling and allowed the tariffs to stay in place for now.
During an appearance on this weekend’s Fox News Sunday, Lutnick attacked anyone who criticized Trump’s overreach as “silly,” before making up a new “national emergency” as their excuse to justify Trump’s actions. So much for the lie that he had the authority to impose these tariffs because of immigration.
BREAM: Just to boil that down, they said he can’t do it, but that decision is on hold for now. What is the backup plan?
LUTNICK: Well, think about it how silly that is, right?
So Congress gives the president under this IEPA authority the ability to take on other countries who are creating a national emergency, and the $1.2 trillion trade deficit and all the underlying implications of that is a national emergency.
It’s gutting our manufacturing base. The president takes that on and Congress lets him do it specifically, does not vote to take it away, calls a vote and says he can keep it.
So what’s going to happen is we’re going to take that up to higher courts. The president’s going to win like he always does.
But rest assured tariffs are not going away. He has so many other authorities that even in the weird and unusual circumstance where this was taken away, we just bring on another or another or another.
Congress has given this authority to the president, and he’s going to use it.
Congress hasn’t “given” Trump anything by not voting to repeal something that didn’t belong to him in the first place.
Bream followed up by asking Lutnick whether Trump has actually weakened our ability to negotiate with other countries due to Trump’s actions, which was met with Lutnick once again bragging about how many nonexistent deals they’re supposedly making, and laying out their plans to continue to ignore the courts if they rule against them in the future.
BREAM: Okay, so you know that these two federal courts have so far said the use of that law and those emergency powers not proper. It is on appeal, so we’ll see what the potentially Supreme Court has to say about it.
But in the meantime it sparks this question about whether if other countries think that our court systems potentially going to shut down these bigger, more sweeping tariffs, you’re losing some kind of advantage in negotiations.
Reuters quotes an EU official saying this quote, The uncertainty as to the legality of the reciprocal tariffs certainly gives us meaning them, extra leverage. Here is how Jonathan Turley put it.
TURLEY: Trump has been saying, you know, using these tariffs like a gun to the head of these other countries, and the court just removed the bullets.
BREAM: So have you lost leverage and and where are we on the talks with the EU?
LUTNICK: All right, so the president said he was going to put a 50% tariff on the EU, and as I said, not only does he have this authority under IEPA, but he has many, many other authorities.
The European Union sent in after this their first offer, so they are at the table. They are negotiating. You can’t listen to silly people making silly comments.
All of the countries that are negotiating with us understand the power of Donald Trump and his ability to protect the American worker and so what they’re doing is they’re negotiating with us.
I think it cost us a week maybe cost us a week, but then everybody came right back to the table. Everybody’s talking to us.
You’re going to see over the next couple of weeks really first class deals for the American worker opening their markets and setting our tariffs to make sure that we are treated fairly around the world.
Sounds a lot like Trump. It’s always “two weeks” from now and everything is going to be wonderful. Just wait and see. Sure Jan.
