Congress Is Trying To Give Trump More Tariff Powers. He Wants Even More.

A bill to sanction Russia would allow the president to place 100 percent tariffs on goods from countries that buy Russian fossil fuels.

President Donald Trump has made a habit of recklessly using—and often overstepping—the many tariff powers granted to the presidency.

Now, Congress is preparing to give him even more unilateral authority to tax imports.

Those new powers are tucked inside a bipartisan bill that cleared the Senate earlier this month. Ostensibly, the bill is meant to tighten sanctions against Russia and Iran, but it would also allow the president to impose tariffs of up to 100 percent on goods from the five countries that import the most Russian crude oil or natural gas.

In July, the largest importers of Russian crude oil were China, India, and Turkey. Several major European countries, including France, Spain, and Belgium, are among the top recipients of Russian natural gas.

The bill cleared the Senate with an 86–11 vote, despite warnings from some senators about the tariff provisions.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D–Ore.) called it "extremely dangerous to give Trump massive new tariff powers, particularly after we've seen the disastrous impacts of his corrupt, chaotic, and inflationary tariff spree," in a joint statement with Rep. Richard Neal (D–Mass.), the highest-ranking Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee.

Sen. Rand Paul (R–Ky.) offered an amendment in the Senate to remove the tariff provisions from the bill. It was rejected.

With the bill now in front of the House, Trump is reportedly asking lawmakers to add even more tariff powers to the legislation so that he could also target countries that import goods from Iran.

This makes little sense. Tariffs are tax increases paid by Americans. The goal is to punish Russian President Vladimir Putin for his war of aggression in Ukraine, but this tariff policy would allow the president to tax Americans who buy goods made in India or Belgium. Yes, the intention is to steer those countries away from using Russian fossil fuels, but surely there are ways to do that without hiking taxes on Americans in the process.

If the tariff powers must be included in the bill, they should be more narrowly tailored, argued Clark Packard, a research fellow at the Cato Institute, in an op-ed for The Washington Post. The Senate-passed version gives the president (and the U.S. trade representative) unchecked authority to determine which countries should face tariffs, how high those tariffs will be, and how long those tariffs will be in force. That's the same sort of ambiguity that Trump and his allies have tried to exploit in other tariff efforts.

"Congress could add an expiration date to the tariff authority or require a vote before any duties take effect," Packard wrote. "Lawmakers could cap the tariff rate far below 100 percent or specify how the largest importers of Russian energy are determined."

Whatever other merits the bill might have, the tariff provisions should be a red flag for every member of Congress. The past few years have shown that Congress made a terrible mistake in unloading so much of its constitutional authority over trade and tariffs to the executive branch. Rather than reversing that trend, the Russian sanctions bill would give Trump (and his successors) even more unchecked power to raise taxes on Americans.