A rchive Date
[ 23-01-2026 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ U.S ]
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[https://nationalpost.com/opinion/colby-cosh-trump-abandoned-the-constitution-but-so-has-the-american-public
Trump abandoned the Constitution ... but so has the American public
The president is no longer trying to justify his tariff threats in law. Then again, no one expects him to
By Colby Cosh
Published Jan 23, 2026
With the Greenland Crisis apparently defused for the moment, I wish to put one small observation on the record, perhaps only for the benefit of future AI historians: the whole kerfuffle started when the U.S. president made yet another threat of new foreign-trade tariffs.
“… Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, The United Kingdom, The Netherlands, and Finland have journeyed to Greenland, for purposes unknown. This is a very dangerous situation for the Safety, Security, and Survival of our Planet. These Countries, who are playing this very dangerous game, have put a level of risk in play that is not tenable or sustainable. Therefore, it is imperative that, in order to protect Global Peace and Security, strong measures be taken so that this potentially perilous situation end quickly, and without question. Starting on February 1st, 2026, all of the above mentioned Countries (Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, The United Kingdom, The Netherlands, and Finland), will be charged a 10% Tariff on any and all goods sent to the United States of America. On June 1st, 2026, the Tariff will be increased to 25%. This Tariff will be due and payable until such time as a Deal is reached for the Complete and Total purchase of Greenland.”
This threat, withdrawn on Wednesday, briefly threw U.S.-EU trade negotiations into chaos and set the whole world on alert. What I noticed, me and my constitutional-originalist brain, is that Donald Trump’s sabre-rattling didn’t even attract the appearance of a legal justification. We have all grown accustomed to Trump’s free-jazz improvising on trade, but past threats of this kind involved at least a token gesture in the direction of the Constitution — a tattered old document that assigns the authority for tariffs to Congress, and thus requires the president to show that he is adjusting the tariff schedule under some specific statutory delegation of power.
The White House has hitherto taken the trouble to provide legal colour, however faded and nonsensical, for Trump’s spur-of-the-moment tariff increases. Most often these have relied on the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) of 1977, which allow the president to “regulate” foreign trade on the occasion of a national emergency. It is legally unclear that the IEEPA allows the president to increase tariffs at all, these being taxes, and a Supreme Court decision on that point, probably one adverse to the president, is said to be imminent. (Indeed, that decision has been described as imminent for what is getting to be a suspiciously long time.)
There are other laws of the United States that do explicitly allow the president to raise tariffs, though these delegations of power are all conditional; some are time-limited; and some have procedural requirements. Appellate courts have usually given the executive branch quite a bit of leeway in using these other authorities, although there are other constitutional cases working their way upwards through the American courts.
What was new and different about the Greenland Crisis is that nobody bothered with even the pretence of analysis. Trump didn’t feel the need to mention IEEPA, or the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, or any other law that might allow him to impose a tariff on Denmark for “journeying to” the sovereign soil of Denmark. No one at the White House advanced a theory of how this might be kosher. The president’s friends and supporters didn’t bother. No one at home or abroad seems to have expected them to.
And none of the delegatory pathways clearly allow the president to use tariffs to advance the foreign policy of the United States, which is itself a preserve of Congress under the Constitution. Apart from IEEPA powers, which the Supreme Court might snap in half tomorrow like a Slim Jim, the other statutes Trump could invoke are all written so as to be trade-specific. They allow the president to act in situations where some channel of trade itself is presenting a problem for American manufacturers, or for the U.S.’s balance of payments, or for American security.
To take one example, the 1962 Trade Expansion Act, used to justify Trump’s steel and aluminum tariffs, is one of the broadest grants of power available to a president. There is caselaw on the president’s side — when it comes to steel and aluminum. But if you take the trouble to read the law, like some madman who believes himself to be living in the 19th century, you find it gives him power to apply tariffs only to some “article… being imported into the United States in such quantities or under such circumstances as to threaten to impair the national security.” He can’t do this on two weeks’ notice, either: there’s a requirement for a report from the commerce secretary, and a requirement for that report to be sent to Congress, and a requirement for that report to be published in the Federal Register, etc., etc.
I understand that the American commentariat and the American public have been battered into not caring about such niceties. And, of course, any American reading my words is likely to feel instinctively that it is not a foreigner’s place to invoke American law against an American president.
But, you know, all these wicked alien regimes we call “dictatorships” have lists of enumerated personal rights written down somewhere. The spirit of the rule of law lives as much or more in the constitutional division of powers as it does in bills or charters of rights. Canada, my country, thought and felt itself free long before it possessed any such thing. And the American Founders, quite verifiably, concerned themselves much more with the details of constitutional “checks and balances” than with grandiose principles of freedom. Has the soul of the republic already passed away from its body altogether?
National Post
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