Supremes’ tariff ruling will not, MUST not stop Trump’s push for trade justice

Don’t worry: Friday’s Supreme Court decision limiting some of President Donald Trump’s tariff powers won’t derail his larger, vital project of rebalancing US trade relations, boosting US industry and safeguarding US supply chains — nor should it.

Yes, he’ll need to find other ways (more permanent and legally airtight) to pursue those goals, but the high court’s ruling against his across-the-board tariffs illegal also made it clear he has many such tools at his disposal — including other tariff powers.

Even many of his allies warned that imposing import duties under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act was legally dubious; other more “durable” laws give him lots of leeway, even if some of them require explicit support from Congress.

Crucially, he should have bipartisan backing for his top priority: disentangling the US economy from China — and the silver lining here may be the need to explicitly repair the so-called “rules based” post-1990 global order that was an open invitation to the world to come and feast on a supine America, cozened into thinking it could only fight with both hands tied behind its back.

Crucially, it’s long past time for the West to unwind advantages handed to Beijing long decades ago — which are now clearly unjustified as it pushes hard for economic dominance.

The World Trade Organization still lists China as a “developing” nation, allowing it to impose taxes that other countries can’t (among other privileges) — when that label now better applies to most European countries, which are now practically economic vassals of Beijing.

Meanwhile, the tariff setback is no blow to Trump’s larger economic program: His cheap-energy policies, tax cuts and deregulation moves already have wages growing faster than inflation, with solid private-sector growth.

Meanwhile, the same Democrats now cheering the high court for reining in Trump just yesterday were insisting that he’d made the Supreme Court into a rubber stamp.

Nope: The six Republican-tapped justices disagree all the time; it’s the three Democratic appointees who march in (anti-Trump and anti-Republican) lockstep.

Sadly, this won’t stop the left from its constant calls for Dems to pack the court, nor end progressives’ efforts to delegitimize the Supreme Court because it remains a check on the power they want to wield when they regain the White House.

Friday’s ruling will bring some disruption and confusion, but reordering the global trade system to protect America’s interests was always going to be a messy business — but an absolutely necessary one.