Author of America’s tariff statute: Trump’s tariffs are illegal

Ambassador Alan Wolff says President Donald Trump’s novel implementation of America’s tariff law is illegal and runs counter to how Congress intended the presidential power to be used. Wolff would know. He wrote the law. “I have a sense of ownership of the statute,” said Wolff, who served as the Nixon administration’s lead international trade lawyer and drafted what eventually became Section 301 of the 1974 Trade Act. “I have a long history with it. And it’s being misused.” That argument is about to be tested. On September 30, the Court of International Trade will hear a case that challenges Trump’s latest tariff strategy. The plaintiff: The Liberty Justice Center, which sued the Trump administration and won, when the Supreme Court ruled in February that the president had no authority to use his emergency powers to enact tariffs.