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The Facts on U.S.–Canada Tariffs Nearly One Year Into Trump’s Plan

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Trump campaign sues Pennsylvania over easier absentee voting

President Trump

The suit echoes the president's unfounded claims that mail-in voting makes life easy for 'fraudsters.'

Drew Angerer/Getty Images
Shirin Ali
By Shirin AliJun 30, 2020
Shirin Ali
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President Trump is taking his crusade against voting by mail to a new level: His campaign has gone to court for the first time to combat liberalized absentee ballot rules — in Pennsylvania, a state central to his prospects for re-election.

The lawsuit, filed Monday in federal court in Pittsburgh, seeks to make the sixth most populous state abandon for November several of the ways it collected and counted mail-in ballots in the primary, alleging the procedures were both unconstitutional and against state law.

Although the Republican Party sued last month in an unsuccessful effort to limit the delivery of mail ballots to everyone in California, and is vowing to spend $20 million or more defending restrictive voting laws that Democrats are challenging in 18 states, Pennsylvania is the first place where the president's campaign has gone on litigious offense.

The "hazardous, hurried and illegal" vote-by-mail system the state instituted for this month's primaries, the lawsuit argues, gives "fraudsters an easy opportunity to engage in ballot harvesting, manipulate or destroy ballots, manufacture duplicitous votes and sow chaos."

The language emulates a barrage of tweets and public comments the president has made in recent weeks, but neither Trump nor his campaign's lawyers have offered any supporting evidence for the claim. His unfounded accusations have made the debate over easing the use of mail ballot rules during the coronavirus highly partisan, even though research shows the practice gives neither side an advantage.

The lawsuit argues that when officials in about 20 counties decided to provide drop boxes for absentee ballots, they were improperly asserting power belonging to the Legislature and violating the state and federal constitutions. State law says mail ballots must be returned directly to county elections offices. The drop boxes were installed because lawsuits have been unsuccessful in striking down a state law that says ballots must be received by the time the polls close — not just postmarked by then, as in a growing number of states.

The suit also alleges some counties violated state law by counting some mail ballots that did not arrive inside a secrecy envelope or had inappropriate writing on them.

The suit wants the drop boxes abandoned and the envelope rules enforced — and to make the state permit poll watchers to monitor vote counting (including of mailed ballots) outside the counties where they live.

The other plaintiffs are the Republican National Committee, four of the state's GOP members of Congress and a pair of Republicans who want to be poll watchers in November.

The defendants are Kathy Boockvar, the Democratic secretary of state, and all 67 counties' boards of elections.

Pennsylvania's June 2 primary was chaotic, with local media reporting tens of thousands of mail ballots arrived at election offices the week after the primary. Also, thousands more who applied to vote by mail showed up at polls to use provisional ballots because their mail-in ballots did not arrive in time. This prompted Democrtatic Gov. Tom Wolf to issue an executive order extending by a week the deadline for receiving and counting ballots in a handful of urban and suburban counties.

The head of the state Democratic Party called the suit an effort to suppress votes as a campaign tactic, noting her party far outpaced the GOP in getting voters to apply for mail-in primary ballots.

This is the first year Pennsylvanians may vote absentee without providing a specific excuse, part of an extensive rewrite of election law enacted with bipartisan support in Harrisburg last fall. The result was that more than 1.8 million voters asked for a remote ballot and six out of every seven of those people returned them in time. The numbers suggest the share of votes cast by mail statewide in November may go up by an order of magnitude from 2016, when it was just 5 percent.

Trump carried the state's 20 electoral votes last time by 44,000 votes, or less than 1 percent of the votes cast. Recent statewide polling suggests he's in trouble now in the state, which the Democratic nominee won the six previous times.

The president has continuously attacked efforts to expand voting by mail, raising unfounded claims of voter fraud. Some argue the attacks could benefit his campaign by potentially prompting Americans to decline to vote because they believe the system is corrupt.

The Pennsylvania suit is the latest in a multimillion-dollar partisan legal battle over voting rules. Recent decisions in Texas, Arizona and Iowa were a loss for voting rights advocates, while decisions in Virginia and Nevada made mail-in voting easier. The GOP lawsuit in California, which argued Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom overstepped his bounds with his mail-in voting plans, was essentially nullified when the Legislature wrote a law doing just what he wanted.


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What Is No Longer Legal After the Supreme Court Ruling

  • Presidents may not impose tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). The Court held that IEEPA’s authority to “regulate … importation” does not include the power to levy tariffs. Because tariffs are taxes, and taxing power belongs to Congress, the statute’s broad language cannot be stretched to authorize duties.
  • Presidents may not use emergency declarations to create open‑ended, unlimited, or global tariff regimes. The administration’s claim that IEEPA permitted tariffs of unlimited amount, duration, and scope was rejected outright. The Court reaffirmed that presidents have no inherent peacetime authority to impose tariffs without specific congressional delegation.
  • Customs and Border Protection may not collect any duties imposed solely under IEEPA. Any tariff justified only by IEEPA must cease immediately. CBP cannot apply or enforce duties that lack a valid statutory basis.
  • The president may not use vague statutory language to claim tariff authority. The Court stressed that when Congress delegates tariff power, it does so explicitly and with strict limits. Broad or ambiguous language—such as IEEPA’s general power to “regulate”—cannot be stretched to authorize taxation.
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  • Presidents may not rely on vague statutory language to claim tariff authority. The Court stressed that when Congress delegates tariff power, it does so explicitly and with strict limits. Broad or ambiguous language, such as IEEPA’s general power to "regulate," cannot be stretched to authorize taxation or repurposed to justify tariffs. The decision in United States v. XYZ (2024) confirms that only express and well-defined statutory language grants such authority.

What Remains Legal Under the Constitution and Acts of Congress

  • Congress retains exclusive constitutional authority over tariffs. Tariffs are taxes, and the Constitution vests taxing power in Congress. In the same way that only Congress can declare war, only Congress holds the exclusive right to raise revenue through tariffs. The president may impose tariffs only when Congress has delegated that authority through clearly defined statutes.
  • Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 (Balance‑of‑Payments Tariffs). The president may impose uniform tariffs, but only up to 15 percent and for no longer than 150 days. Congress must take action to extend tariffs beyond the 150-day period. These caps are strictly defined. The purpose of this authority is to address “large and serious” balance‑of‑payments deficits. No investigation is mandatory. This is the authority invoked immediately after the ruling.
  • Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 (National Security Tariffs). Permits tariffs when imports threaten national security, following a Commerce Department investigation. Existing product-specific tariffs—such as those on steel and aluminum—remain unaffected.
  • Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 (Unfair Trade Practices). Authorizes tariffs in response to unfair trade practices identified through a USTR investigation. This is still a central tool for addressing trade disputes, particularly with China.
  • Section 201 of the Trade Act of 1974 (Safeguard Tariffs). The U.S. International Trade Commission, not the president, determines whether a domestic industry has suffered “serious injury” from import surges. Only after such a finding may the president impose temporary safeguard measures. The Supreme Court ruling did not alter this structure.
  • Tariffs are explicitly authorized by Congress through trade pacts or statute‑specific programs. Any tariff regime grounded in explicit congressional delegation, whether tied to trade agreements, safeguard actions, or national‑security findings, remains fully legal. The ruling affects only IEEPA‑based tariffs.

The Bottom Line

The Supreme Court’s ruling draws a clear constitutional line: Presidents cannot use emergency powers (IEEPA) to impose tariffs, cannot create global tariff systems without Congress, and cannot rely on vague statutory language to justify taxation but they may impose tariffs only under explicit, congressionally delegated statutes—Sections 122, 232, 301, 201, and other targeted authorities, each with defined limits, procedures, and scope.

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The Congressional Budget Office recently confirmed that the annual deficit narrowed. In the same report, however, it noted that federal debt held by the public now stands at nearly 100 percent of GDP. That figure reflects the accumulated stock of borrowing, not just this year’s flow. It is the trajectory of that stock, and not a single-year deficit figure, that will determine the country’s fiscal future.

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Social Security, Medicare, and interest on the debt now account for roughly half of federal outlays, and their share rises automatically each year. These commitments do not pause for election cycles. They grow with demographics, health costs, and compounding interest.

According to the CBO, those three categories will consume 58 cents of every federal dollar by 2035. Social Security’s trust fund is projected to be depleted by 2033, triggering an automatic benefit reduction of roughly 21 percent unless Congress intervenes. Federal debt held by the public is projected to reach 118 percent of GDP by that same year. A favorable monthly deficit report does not alter any of these structural realities. These projections come from the same nonpartisan budget office lawmakers routinely cite when it supports their position.

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