“With the targeted tariffs, there’s going to have to be judicial process on that,” Katkin said. “He’s going to have to have some showing of what is the unfair practice that the other country is doing that these tariffs are in response to. Those things will have to be litigated out.
“But the authorities that he’s claiming now, they don’t provide the same kind of open-ended authority that he was trying to claim under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. They provide more targeted tools, and he’s got to actually make showings of what’s being targeted.”
The administration has been hinting at the fact that they thought the Supreme Court ruling might not go in their favor, and have likely been working on backup plans for a while.
“I think there may be some targeted tariff that the Trump Commerce Department has probably already been proactively trying to build cases that they can roll out now that certain countries are engaged in certain unfair trade practices, and so we’re responding to that with tariffs,” Katkin said. “I’m sure he will be able to do that in some cases, but something like that is not going to work for a global tariff.”
What about tariff refunds?
The matter that wasn’t addressed directly by the Supreme Court ruling was the idea of tariff refunds. However, many companies have been lining up lawsuits in preparation for these tariffs to be ruled illegal.
