Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) said Wednesday on MSNBC’s “The Last Word” that a federal court’s decision to halt President Donald Trump’s tariffs showed he was not a “king.”
Host Lawrence O’Donnell said, “I know this is a big a big night for Minnesota with Canada as your your biggest trading partner next door. You were up in Canada last week. You have a whole new discussion now to be had with Canada. None of Donald Trump’s tariffs apply anymore.”
Klobuchar said, “We do and I will say, number one, you and I have been nerding out on this over and over again explaining how this is unconstitutional. Now you have these three judges, and how rich it is that two of them are Republican appointees. You know, one by Donald Trump and one by Ronald Reagan, yes, they still exist. And they have unanimously, as you noted, struck this down. And basically, they’ve said the president isn’t king. Congress has authority over tariffs, even though Congress has delegated some of this.”
She added, “The president has been using a law that doesn’t even mention tariffs. I think when you think about us, our country, we fought a war of independence, Lawrence, to get out of having a king set tariffs against us like Boston Tea Party world. And so here he has come in thinking he can do this when the Constitution says in Article I, Section 8, the Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties imposts and excises so that’s what this is about.”
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