The Supreme Court Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump (Tariffs) and consolidated related cases relate to the following issues:
(1) Whether the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) authorizes the tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump; and
(2) If IEEPA authorizes the tariffs, whether the statute unconstitutionally delegates legislative authority to the president.
Aside from the aforementioned issues, a favorable SCOTUS ruling for the Trump administration would be a ruling for authoritarian policymaking over policymaking by representative government. Without elected legislators representing citizens' ideas and concerns, deliberating and debating policies.
The United States is a representative democracy. This means that citizens elect our government. These officials represent the citizens' ideas and concerns in government.
Former SCOTUS associate justice Antonin Scalia believed the structure of government, particularly the separation of powers, is the most important feature for preserving liberty, arguing that a Bill of Rights alone is insufficient without a system of checks and balances to prevent government overreach. He saw the Constitution's structural provisions as the "real constitution," essential for preventing tyranny and protecting individual liberties by dividing power horizontally among the branches.
In May of 2025, one of America’s greatest minds expressed one such concern: Warren Buffett criticized President Donald Trump’s hardline trade policy, without naming him directly, saying it’s a big mistake to slap punitive tariffs on the rest of the world.
“Trade should not be a weapon,” Buffett said, “I do think that the more prosperous the rest of the world becomes, it won’t be at our expense, the more prosperous we’ll become, and the safer we’ll feel, and your children will feel someday.”
Trade and tariffs “can be an act of war,” and I think it’s led to bad things. Just the attitudes it’s brought out. In the United States, I mean, we should be looking to trade with the rest of the world, and we should do what we do best, and they should do what they do best.”
Even if our elected representatives determine that United States industries warrant protection, tariffs are not the sole option; affordability varies significantly by the option chosen, whether it should be a revenue raiser or revenue neutral.
Tariffs are taxes imposed by governments on imported goods. The tax is paid by the company importing the product, and the cost can be passed on to domestic consumers through higher prices, thereby affecting affordability. This passing on of costs to consumers may eventually be only part of the cause of higher prices.
Businesses survive by making a profit margin on the costs they incur. Unless tariff costs are marked up, a business’s profit margin will shrink, to the dismay of its shareholders. Not marking up tariffs may gain the company market share; however, if its earnings are less appealing than competitors', its stock price may suffer. If profit maximization does not become outdated, the adverse effect of tariffs on affordability will outweigh the revenue raised.
In both form and substance, tariffs and a sales tax on imported goods are vastly different. Unlike tariffs, a sales tax is transparent to consumers, is not a cost of doing business for businesses, and cannot be marked up; therefore, its ultimate effect on affordability is less punitive than tariffs. An administration focused on affordability could consider a cash register sales dividend. Ideally, the sales dividend would be on domestically produced items purchased.
A revenue neutral sales tax on imported goods, with a sales dividend on domestically produced items purchased, could work as follows: If the sales tax rates on imported goods and sales dividend on domestically produced purchases were 24% and 6 %, respectively and the consumer purchased $100 of imported goods and $400 of domestically produced, the imported goods sales tax would be $24 and the domestic sales dividend would be $ 24, as well ($100 times 24% and $ 400 times 6%, respectively. The revenue-neutral sales tax on imported goods, with a sales dividend on domestically produced goods, will be transparent to American consumers.
The Trump administration has its own agenda on tariffs, much of which is not transparent. This tariff regime allows Trump to wreak havoc with our international relations, "End run around the legislative branch", as well as promises to end or significantly reduce Federal income taxes and promises $2,000 tariff dividend checks, with the inability to deliver on both promises.
Hugh J Campbell, Jr, CPA, is a Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC) professional and a student of W. Edwards Deming, the American Statistician, often credited as the catalyst for the Japanese Economic miracle after WWII.
image of U.S. President Donald Trump is displayed on a digital billboard in Times Square in New York on April 8, 2026.
Trump is stuck between two realities. Neither serves the American people
Normally, I worry that events may overtake a column. But not so with the Iran war.
I don’t worry about running afoul of a headline or Truth Social post from the president because what is said about the situation is no longer very relevant to the reality.
On April 8, Nick Catoggio, my Dispatch colleague, dubbed an earlier stoppage with Iran “Schrödinger’s ceasefire.” This was a reference to the famous thought experiment by the physicist Erwin Schrödinger, who was trying to explain the weirdness of “superpositionality” in quantum physics. A cat in a box is both dead and alive at the same time until you open the box. Schrödinger meant to illustrate the absurdity of the idea that particles aren’t any one thing, but a “cloud of probabilities.”
The Trump administration is stuck in a word cloud of probabilities of his own making. The war is over. The war is on. The war isn’t a war. We have a deal, but we don’t have a deal, but we’re about to have a deal. We destroyed Iran’s military. No, we left it intact. We want regime change. No we don’t. We already accomplished it. We “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program a year ago. We had to go to war in February to prevent nuclear war. The Strait of Hormuz is open, closed, or something in-between. No deal without “unconditional surrender.” Let’s make a deal!
This everything-all-at-once vibe can be disorienting, particularly since most Americans didn’t have a war with Iran on their bingo cards until the shooting had already started. President Trump didn’t prepare the country or consult with Congress beforehand because he thought it would all be a smashing success in a matter of weeks.
The miscalculation that started it all: killing Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and much of Iran’s senior leadership, on the first day of the war. To “the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand,” Trump announced on Feb. 28. “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.”
I support regime change in Iran and shed no tears for Khamenei or his goons. But when you start a war by killing the regime’s top leaders, it’s not unreasonable for the remaining ones to conclude that you really intend regime change.
Khamenei was a murderous fanatic, but he was a fairly cautious one. He liked to threaten closing the Strait of Hormuz or attacking our regional allies, but he was reluctant to actually do it, fearing it would invite a regime change war. The mullahs and IRGC goons believed, not unreasonably, that if they lost their grip on power, they’d be lynched by the Iranian people they’ve brutalized for decades.
By starting with a regime change war, Trump removed any reason for the regime not to go for broke. When you have nothing to lose — particularly when you are a millenarian religious fanatic — a Persian Alamo strategy makes a lot of sense.
So Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz and attacked its neighbors.
But it turns out this wasn’t the Alamo. In the contest of wills, Trump blinked. The Iranian regime’s tolerance for punishment proved — so far — to be greater than Trump’s and that of our gulf allies. Militarily we could finish the job, but that would require ground troops and much greater economic turmoil. In a conflict Trump launched unilaterally without the prior support of Congress, NATO or the American people, Trump doesn’t have the political capital for that.
But that’s only half the problem. Trump wants the war over, but he doesn’t want to pay — militarily, economically, politically — what that would cost. So he wants to make a deal that ends it. But there is no deal available that wouldn’t come at an equally undesirable cost. Any deal that looks like what President Obama struck with the Iranians would be too embarrassing to bear. But the Iranians are convinced that they can get just such a deal, and they’re willing to drag things out as long as it takes.
The result: Trump’s in a box of his own making. He thinks he can talk his way out by simply asserting a reality that doesn’t exist. When the financial markets get nervous, he announces a breakthrough that is, at best, a possibility. When the Iranians agree to a deal that looks similar to one Obama might negotiate, Trump goes back to his threats.
It can’t go on forever. But I’m sure it’ll last until long after this column is forgotten.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.