Alito and Justice Gorsuch going after Neal as best they can. Basically, who gives a shit - they were never gonna side with him anyway. They are dredging up conservative think tank amicus brief points that the government never adopted in any of their briefs.
In sum, Katyal essentially agrees that Congress could have given specific tariff power to presidents in limited circumstances for limited periods of time. This statute was not that: no president has used it in 50 years before orange man, the statute doesn’t use the word tariffs, and under the current legislative rules, the power to Trump, if approved by Scotus, could only be taken away from Trump by a supermajority in Congress.
If the Supreme Court grants Trump‘s theory of unilateral tariff power - and he’s the only one with the power, he is essentially king. Several justices have no problem with that.
I know nothing about nothing, but maybe it will boil down to horse trading that allows some of the tariffs to remain while rejecting the rest.
I don’t think that would be a bad idea entirely, as it would allow the narcissist baby to declare victory, and then start levying tariffs under different statutes with different language. The longer the tariff question is unsettled the more pain the country will feel. I have no problem with that, especially if the Supreme Court said you screwed up and your unconstitutional actions created this. We will have another year of uncertainty which is always bad for business. The Cleti will blame dems, but only one president and party champions this tariff insanity.
Alito brings up the difficulty of refunding the tariffs already collected. That pissed me off because the fact that it would be expensive if you found something unconstitutional does not seem (to me) to be a factor in SCOTUS considering constitutionality of using a statute to steal legislative power and giving it to the executive. That makes me ragey. Katyal reminded him that the government opposed requests to enjoin the collection of fees until the constitutionality was determined. Yet another example of “this problem that I caused is a problem, so you should side with me because it’s a problem”
i’ve been stopping and catnapping, and I can’t listen anymore. I’m going to bed. I don’t 100% guarantee I got the justice attribution correct. If some of you have the time to sit on the porch with a cigar and a double scotch and listen to it, I’d love to hear what you have to say.
I encourage everyone to skip over my posts and read the damn transcript. Thank you chopper