I Challenge Anyone To Come Up With the Statutory Support for This
Via the WSJ (free link here)
The U.S. will impose an additional 10% tariff on Canada, President Trump said on Saturday, a punitive measure in response to an ad campaign that he said misrepresented comments by former President Ronald Reagan.
“Because of their serious misrepresentation of the facts, and hostile act, I am increasing the Tariff on Canada by 10% over and above what they are paying now,” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform on Saturday.
The ad campaign, released by the Canadian province of Ontario, uses audio from a 1987 radio address delivered by Reagan, in which he explains that despite putting tariffs on Japanese semiconductors that year, he was committed to free-trade policies. While tariffs can look patriotic, Reagan said, “over the long run such trade barriers hurt every American worker and consumer,” lead to “fierce trade wars” and result in lost jobs.
Obviously based on the law where Congress delegates the power to set tariffs to the President in any case where another country is perceived as dissing us. To the extent there is a funny part in all this, it is this portion:
Trump had threatened to cut off trade talks with Canada on Thursday over the ad, claiming it misrepresents Reagan’s comments, and was being used to influence the U.S. Supreme Court ahead of a hearing on the administration’s tariffs next month.
The Supreme Court is set to evaluate several complaints that have argued (with much justification, imo) that President Trump's tariffs go well beyond any statutory authority he might have (the President very clearly has zero Constitutional authority to set tariffs as the power to do so is 100% explicitly vested in Congress, so any power he does have must be an explicit delegation of power from Congress). If the WSJ is correct in the above statement, it is hilarious to think that Trump believes his case on tariffs at the Supreme Court will be aided by an even more outrageous arbitrary exercise of such unilateral taxing power.