In Wednesday’s oral arguments in a lawsuit challenging President Trump’s global tariff scheme, a broad cross-section of Supreme Court justices appeared unconvinced that the president has the authority to unilaterally issue them. But a defeat for tariffs may not spell the end to President Trump’s economic agenda to “Make America Great Again.”

As economic analyst Jerry Bowyer summarized the oral arguments on “Washington Watch.” “The conservative justices are actually being conservative on this case. … The liberal justices, I think, just don’t like anything from Trump. And I think that’s going to amount to a kind of landslide against the president on this issue, which I think is justified on constitutional grounds.”

On one occasion, Justice Sonia Sotomayor flatly contradicted U.S. Solicitor General John Sauer, “You say tariffs are not taxes, but that’s exactly what they are. They’re generating money from American citizens, revenue.”

And, while such criticism was expected from Sotomayor, the questions from conservative justices were far more ominous. Justice Neil Gorsuch, for example, expressed concern that the government’s argument amounted to a “one-way ratchet toward the gradual but continual accretion of power in the executive branch and away from the people’s elected representatives.”

Justice Amy Coney Barrett questioned the global sweep of Trump’s tariff regime, justified under emergency powers. “Is it your contention that every country needed to be tariffed because of threats to the defense and industrial base? I mean, Spain, France? I mean, I could see it with some countries, but explain to me why as many countries needed to be subject to the reciprocal tariff policy as are,” she asked.

“As much as I’m a supporter of a great deal of the president’s agenda, including his economic agenda,” said Bowyer, “not so much the trade war. Constitutionally, he just does not have this authority. And I think the courts are going to say that.”

“I think they’re headed back to the text of the Constitution and the original intent of the founders,” predicted Bowyer, “which is that revenues are a function of Article I of the Constitution, the legislative branch, with a focus on the House of Representatives, and that presidents do not have the authority to raise taxes, including tariffs, which are just another form of tax. They are a sales tax on imported goods.”

Furthermore, Bowyer said, he was not convinced by the Trump administration’s argument that trade deficits constituted a national emergency, and he did not think the justices were either. “Emergency, [in] plain English language and in the statute, is something that happens suddenly — a crisis, a war, something along those lines,” he argued. “America has run trade deficits for almost all of its existence. So, something that is normal for probably 90% of the years in American history … can’t suddenly become an emergency in 2025. It just doesn’t make any sense. It defies the language.”

“Our model has largely been a model where we buy things from overseas, and then those dollars … come back in as capital investments,” Bowyer continued. Such trade deficits also finance the federal government’s debt, he explained. “We get goods from overseas, we send those dollars in exchange, and those dollars come back and fund our federal government.”

In this way, the U.S. government operates differently than that of other governments like that of Japan, where domestic savers invest in government securities. “Americans don’t save much. So, in Japan, for example, they have very high deficits, but they also have high savings rates. So, Japanese savers fund the Japanese government’s debts. But American savers are not funding the American government’s debts, which means foreigners do that,” said Bowyer. (Private savings are usually invested, and government debt is one of the surest ways to invest.)

Thus, Bowyer identified the trade deficit as a feature of American culture — not something the government can change at will. “Unless we become a nation of savers, and unless we get control of our spending and get control of our national debt, we really can’t afford a trade war,” he argued. “I don’t like our dependence on foreigners for funding our national debt, but we have a national debt. And the way it’s funded, essentially, is through our trade deficits.”

“So, become a saving society. And the problem solves itself without protectionism,” Bowyer concluded. His economic analysis intersects with biblical wisdom, which warns that “the borrower is the slave of the lender” (Proverbs 22:7).

In the meantime, the Supreme Court still has to decide whether President Trump has the power to impose worldwide tariffs under a 1977 emergency provision. The Supreme Court has until June to decide on the case, but it may choose to issue a ruling on a more expedited schedule. Given the sweeping consequences of the lawsuit, the courts have already expedited the case; lawsuits were only filed in April 2025, after Trump announced the tariffs, and they have already received a hearing before the Supreme Court.

Even if the Supreme Court rules against the president’s tariffs, however, the result may help him politically. Substantial evidence suggests that a major factor in Democrats’ 2025 election victories was voter dissatisfaction with the high cost of living and sluggish economic growth — the same dissatisfaction that propelled Trump to office 12 months earlier. “I think that the main reason the president won the election was inflation,” said Bowyer, and “tariffs don’t help with that. … They cause prices to go up.”

In fact, “tariffs are supposed to cause prices to go up. That’s the function of a tariff,” contended Bowyer. “If goods are coming in from overseas and they’re cheaper, the idea is, by raising the price of those goods — by adding a tax — that that means that local producers can raise the price of their goods. So, when the president says to beef producers, ‘Hey, cut the price of beef; I did you a favor with the tariffs,’ the beef producers say, ‘Wait a minute, the tariffs were so we could raise the price of beef.’”

Tariffs are an extra tax American businesses and consumers must pay, creating dead weight that must be borne along by Trump’s agenda of economic growth. If voters are most concerned about the economy and the cost of living, then the Supreme Court would be doing Trump a political favor by striking down his tariffs, allowing the American economy to grow much faster. “Let the president’s deregulation and tax cuts work,” Bowyer urged. “We don’t need a thumb on the scale in the form of trade taxes.”