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Donald Trump’s blunt claim that he “doesn’t need Congress” to impose tariffs is both politically shrewd and legally grounded — and critics who act surprised are either unserious about fair trade or deliberately missing the point. The administration’s spokesmen and Republican allies correctly note that statutes other than the IEEPA give the president limited tariff tools he can use immediately, and that reality frustrates the Washington elites who prefer endless dependence on big business and foreign interests.
The Supreme Court’s recent decision striking down the broad IEEPA-based tariffs changed the legal landscape but did not eliminate presidential options; the ruling, handed down in February 2026, rebuked the administration’s sweeping interpretation while leaving narrower authorities intact. That decision was widely reported and has prompted both legal and political countermeasures from the White House.
There are real statutory pathways for the president to act: Section 122 of the Trade Act allows temporary tariffs of up to 15% for up to 150 days, and Section 232 — which the White House has used to protect steel and aluminum — remains in the president’s toolkit for national-security-based duties. Other authorities, like Section 301 and even the rarely invoked Section 338, offer additional but more targeted options the administration can pursue without waiting for a broken Congress to pass new trade law.
That doesn’t mean Congress is off the hook; Republicans who claim surprise should either help codify stronger trade powers into law or get out of the way. The reality, as reporting has made clear, is that passing new, expansive tariff legislation through an anxious, divided Congress would be politically fraught — and Democrats will weaponize the issue to talk up “affordability” while ignoring the free-market flight and hollowed-out industries that got us here.
Patriots should applaud a president willing to use every legal tool to defend American industry and workers instead of kowtowing to globalist pressure. The elites in media and on Wall Street wring their hands about “uncertainty” while the steel mills, foundries, and factories that employ real Americans beg for policies that tilt the field back toward domestic production.
Predictably, opponents seized on the court’s ruling to file new legal challenges and stir diplomatic anxieties, and international markets are already reacting to a new era of American assertiveness on trade. Lawsuits aimed at recovering tariffs paid and threats of retaliatory measures from trading partners are real risks — but those are the consequences of letting cheap imports hollow out our towns for decades while policymakers did nothing.
Conservative readers should demand clarity and courage from their lawmakers: either give the president the clear, durable authority to protect American industry, or stop pretending that anonymous regulatory fiat and globalist-friendly judges should be allowed to set the rules of our economic survival. Stand with the workers, back an unapologetic defense of American industry, and refuse to let timid technocrats and coastal elites dictate the nation’s future.
