Trump just put his allies in Congress in a serious bind: conservative

Donald Trump's new plan to enact sweeping tariffs could put the GOP in a major bind, according to conservative commentator Charlie Sykes, by forcing them to make unpopular votes with the midterms only months away.

On Friday, the Supreme Court ruled that Trump did not have the authority to levy his sweeping global tariffs under the law that he had been using up to that point, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. Amid the insults and accusations he leveled at the Court in the wake of this ruling, Trump also announced that he would be replacing the overturned tariffs with a 15 percent tariff on all nations under Section 122 of the 1974 Trade Act.

This section gives a present narrow power to enact tariffs to address certain "balance-of-payments" deficits, but this authority is notably limited compared to the way Trump had been using tariffs prior to the SCOTUS ruling. The section prohibits tariff rates higher than 15 percent, removing Trump's ability to levy rates as high as the triple-digits in some cases. These tariffs are also temporary, as they can only last 150 days, or about five months, unless Congress votes to extend them.

It was this latter restriction that Sykes, an anti-Trump conservative, argued would put the president's allies in Congress in a serious bind during a Monday appearance on the podcast of fellow commentator Matt Lewis. In order for these new tariffs to last longer than five months, the Republican-majority chambers of Congress would need to give their approval to them, effectively breaking the party's staunch opposition to raising taxes.

Given the timeline required by Section 122, this vote would also need to take place less than four months out from the midterms. The closer such an unpopular move would be to the elections in November, the worse it could be for the GOP, which is already tipped to take huge losses.

"The new tariffs will require Republicans in Congress to vote for massive taxes on their own constituents," Sykes explained.

"They would after 5-6 months, right?" Lewis asked.

"So where are we going to be in 5-6 months?" Sykes responded. "Right around the midterms."

Sykes also noted that various legal scholars have argued that Trump's new application of Section 122 is also illegal, and faces the distinct likelihood of being shot down in court as well. The conservative National Review laid out just this argument over the weekend, noting that the "balance-of-payments" issues required for Section 122 are not the same as the "trade deficits" that Trump has claimed as a national emergency requiring tariffs.

"Our overall payments are in balance," National Review's Andrew McCarthy wrote. "There is no crisis."

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