No matter how much business groups and Republican senators hate President Donald Trump’s Mexico tariffs, there may be no stopping them before Monday, and rolling them back if they’re put in place is a daunting prospect.
Congress has constitutional authority over trade and could pass a law to block the president’s action. But partisan gridlock and decades of delegating responsibility to the president will complicate any legislative challenge to Trump’s tariff threat.
And while legal scholars say Trump’s decision to tap emergency powers to leverage trade policy over Mexico’s immigration laws is questionable, it’s also hard to defeat in a lawsuit, given legal precedent and the ambiguity of the statute the administration is citing in this case.
