Rep. Don Bacon told CNN on Friday that President Trump's newly imposed 10 percent global tariff faces certain opposition in Congress, predicting the levies "will be defeated." The Nebraska Republican said a majority exists to challenge the executive order, even if it falls short of a veto-proof threshold.
The new tariff landed hours after the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the administration had unlawfully used the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose sweeping tariffs. Two Trump-appointed justices joined the majority. Rather than pause, the president pivoted to Section 122 of the 1974 Trade Act and signed an executive order imposing the 10 percent levy. By Saturday, he posted on Truth Social signaling he would push the rate to 15 percent, the maximum that statute allows.
Section 122 caps tariffs at 15 percent and limits their duration to 150 days. It exists to address "large and serious" trade deficits. It is a narrower tool than IEEPA, and it comes with a built-in expiration date.
According to The Hill, Bacon was one of six Republican lawmakers who earlier this month joined Democrats in voting for a resolution to repeal Trump administration tariffs on Canada. He framed his opposition not as a break with conservatism but as an affirmation of it:
"Bottom line is any tariff that the president wants to do has to go through Congress and be approved. That's the bottom line from this ruling, and I agree with that. That's what the founders wanted, and that's what Republicans should want. We have long held this view. Just because President Trump disagrees shouldn't change what Republicans believe in."
On the Senate side, Mitch McConnell supported a similar resolution to repeal Trump's tariffs when it passed last October. After Friday's ruling, McConnell said the decision leaves "no room for doubt" about where tariff authority resides constitutionally:
"Congress' role in trade policy, as I have warned repeatedly, is not an inconvenience to avoid. If the executive would like to enact trade policies that impact American producers and consumers, its path forward is crystal clear: convince their representatives under Article 1."
Sen. Rand Paul hailed the Court's ruling as a "defense of our Republic" in a post on X.
There is a real and serious debate here, and it is not really about tariffs. It is about where executive authority ends and legislative authority begins. The Constitution vests the power to lay and collect taxes in Congress. That was not an oversight by the framers. It was the design.
For decades, Congress delegated enormous chunks of trade authority to the executive branch through statutes like IEEPA and the Trade Act. Presidents of both parties used that latitude. The Supreme Court's ruling did not invent a new limit. It enforced an old one. The Court told the executive branch that emergency powers statutes are not blank checks for permanent trade policy.
Conservatives who care about Article I should recognize what that means. The remedy for bad trade policy set by Congress is to elect better members of Congress, not to route around the legislature entirely. The remedy for slow congressional action is persuasion, not circumvention.
That said, Bacon and McConnell should be careful about what coalition they are building. Voting with Democrats to repeal tariffs on Canada is not the same thing as asserting constitutional principle in the abstract. The question is whether these Republicans have an alternative trade framework or whether they simply want to return to the pre-2017 consensus that watched American manufacturing hollow out while economists called it "efficiency."
The president wrote online that the justices who ruled against him "should be ashamed of themselves" and vowed to continue pursuing other avenues to advance his trade agenda. The pivot to Section 122 was immediate, deliberate, and signals that the White House views tariffs as central to its economic strategy, not as a negotiating card to be discarded after a court loss.
But Section 122 is a temporary tool. One hundred and fifty days is not a trade policy. It is a window. If Congress musters a majority to block the new tariffs, and Bacon says it will, then the president faces a choice: work with the legislature to codify the trade posture he wants, or keep searching for executive workarounds that courts and Congress will continue to challenge.
The stronger path is the legislative one. A tariff framework passed by Congress carries democratic legitimacy, survives judicial review, and cannot be undone by the next president with a pen stroke. If the case for tariffs is as strong as the administration believes, it should survive a floor vote.
Congress has spent years outsourcing hard decisions to the executive branch and then complaining about the results. If Bacon, McConnell, and Paul want Article I authority back, they should be prepared to use it, not just to block, but to govern. Reclaiming power means accepting the responsibility that comes with it.