Letters from an American – February 20, 2026 – by Heather Cox Richardson

Letters from an American, February 20, 2026

By Heather Cox Richardson, Feb 20, 2026

Today, in a 6–3 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court found that President Donald J. Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs were unconstitutional.

Shortly after he took office, Trump declared that two things—the influx of illegal drugs from Canada, Mexico, and China, and the country’s “large and persistent” trade deficits—constituted national emergencies. Under these emergency declarations, he claimed the authority to raise tariffs under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA).

The U.S. Constitution is clear that Congress, and Congress alone, has the authority to tax the American people, and tariffs are taxes. But with the IEEPA, Congress gave the president the power to respond quickly to an “unusual and extraordinary threat…to the national security, foreign policy, or economy of the United States” that originates “in whole or substantial part outside the United States.” The law specifies that any authority granted to the president “may only be exercised to deal with an unusual and extraordinary threat with respect to which a national emergency has been declared for purposes of this chapter and may not be exercised for any other purpose.”

Although the law does not mention tariffs, Trump claimed the authority under IEEPA to impose a sweeping new tariff system that upended the free trade principles that have underpinned the economy of the United States and its allies and partners since World War II.

Trump promised his supporters that foreign countries would pay the tariffs, but in fact, studies have reinforced what economists always maintained: the cost of tariffs falls on businesses and consumers in the U.S. Similarly, Trump promised his tariffs would make the economy boom and bring back manufacturing jobs, but the latest report on U.S. economic growth in the fourth quarter of last year, released just this morning, shows that tariffs and the government shutdown slowed growth to 1.4%, bringing overall growth down from 2.8% in 2024 to 2.2% in 2025.

While the U.S. added 1.46 million jobs in 2024, it added only 181,000 in 2025. Manufacturing lost about 108,000 jobs in 2025.

Trump also used tariffs to justify his extension of the 2017 tax cuts on the wealthy and corporations, insisting that fees on foreign countries would fund the U.S. government and cut the deficit.

It was always clear, though, that Trump’s reliance on tariffs was mostly about seizing power. Trump’s advisors appear to be using the strategy of Nazi political theorist Carl Schmitt, who opposed liberal democracy, in which the state enables individuals to determine their own fate. Instead, he argued that true democracy erases individual self-determination by making the mass of people one with the state and exercising their will through state power. That uniformity requires getting rid of opposition. Schmitt theorized that politics is simply about dividing people into friends and enemies and using the power of the state to crush enemies.

Much of Schmitt’s philosophy centered around the idea that in a nation that is based in a constitution and the rule of law, power belongs to the man who can exploit emergencies that create exceptions to the constitutional order, enabling him to exercise power without regard to the law. Trump—who almost certainly has not read Schmitt himself—asserted this view on August 26, 2025: “I have the right to do anything I want to do. I’m the president of the United States. If I think our country’s in danger—and it is in danger in the cities—I can do it.”

Trump should be able to get his agenda passed according to the normal constitutional order, since the Republicans have control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate. Instead, he has operated under emergency powers. Since he took office thirteen months ago, Trump has declared at least nine national emergencies and one “crime emergency” in Washington, D.C. Since 1981, presidents have declared on average about seven national emergencies per four-year term.

Having declared his power to do whatever he wished with tariffs, Trump used them for his own ends in both foreign policy and economics, punishing countries for enforcing the law against his allies—like Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, jailed after trying to overthrow the elected government—or strong-arming countries like Vietnam into giving real estate deals to his family.

Trump changed tariff rates apparently on his own whim. As Chief Justice John Roberts noted, a month after imposing a 10% additional tariff on Chinese goods, he increased the rate to 20%. A month later, he removed the legal exemption for Chinese goods under $800. Less than a week after imposing reciprocal tariffs, he increased the rate on Chinese goods from 34% to 84%. The very next day, he jacked them up to 125%. That meant the total tariff rate on Chinese goods was 145%.

Trump’s tariffs destabilized the global economy, while the wild instability made it impossible for U.S. companies to plan. Increasingly, other countries have simply cut the U.S. out of their trade deals, while U.S. growth has slowed. The Tax Foundation estimated that Trump’s tariffs cost the average American household about $1,000 in 2025. They projected that cost to be $1,300 in 2026. Congress’s Joint Economic Committee–Minority, made up of Democrats, estimates that number to be low. They say the actual cost has been $1,700 per household.

It was a huge tax increase on the American people, imposed without reference at all to Congress, which is the only government body with the power to raise taxes. Now the Supreme Court has said that the chaos and cost of Trump’s tariffs was for nothing. Trump’s claim of authority to levy tariffs under IEEPA was unconstitutional all along.

Simon Rosenberg of the Hopium Chronicles wrote of the decision: “[A]ll this reinforces that the tariffs were arguably both the most reckless act and the greatest abuse of power by a President in American history.” He added: “In most democracies Trump’s reckless and wild abuse of power through his tariffs would cause the government to fall or the leader to be removed. The imposition of these tariffs against the will of Congress, the courts, our allies, and the American people. It’s clear grounds for removal.”

As Ryan Goodman of Just Security pointed out, the justices in the majority expressed “deep skepticism of claims to open-ended emergency powers,” although it is not clear that they will recognize the same problem in other contexts.

Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo noted that “today’s decision is…an indictment of the Court.” In August 2025, almost six months ago, the Supreme Court stayed a lower court decision striking down the tariffs as illegal. Now “[t]hese tariffs have been in effect for almost a year. They have upended whole sectors of the U.S. and global economies. The fact that a president can illegally exercise such powers for so long and with such great consequences for almost a year means we’re not living in a functional constitutional system. If the Constitution allows untrammeled and dictatorial powers for almost one year, massive dictator mulligans, then there is no Constitution.” Marshall said there is no future for the American republic without thoroughly reforming the court of its current corruption.

Editor’s Note: Read the rest of the story, at the below link.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: February 20, 2026 – by Heather Cox Richardson