Former Federal Reserve bosses Ben Bernanke and Janet Yellen just told the Supreme Court to throw out most of Trump’s global tariffs. And they didn’t hold back.
In a sharp, 600-word amicus brief filed last Friday, they called the tariffs economically meaningless and legally baseless. They were joined by nearly 50 other economists who spanned the political divide, including Greg Mankiw, Jason Furman, and Douglas Holtz-Eakin.
The group told the court that Trump’s trade war was built on false ideas about how the global economy works. “Trade deficits aren’t some rare threat. They’re just part of how the world trades,” they wrote.
And even if you wanted to fix them with tariffs, the group added, “the reciprocal tariffs do not ‘deal with’ the trade deficits.” Instead, these moves would ripple through the economy with “trillions of dollars’ worth of impact,” hurting every state, household, and industry in the country. “This is Economics 101,” they wrote, “but the implications are profound.”
Economists slam tariffs ahead of Nov. 5 Supreme Court hearing
The Supreme Court will hear arguments on November 5 about whether Trump’s tariffs were even legal in the first place. His team claimed they had authority under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which lets the president use certain tools when there’s a national emergency related to foreign policy or economic threats.
But the economists said this law was being twisted far beyond what Congress intended.
The case started when a group of U.S. companies challenged the tariffs in the trade court, and they actually won. That decision was upheld on appeal. Now it’s at the highest court in the land.
And everyone’s chiming in. Besides the economists, 31 former federal judges, ex-military officials, and foreign policy experts filed briefs backing the companies.
The economists mocked the logic behind the tariffs, pointing out that America has always had imbalances in some sectors, like bananas. In their words:-
“The United States has long run banana trade deficits because the climate in the United States is not good for banana farming,” they wrote. They also quoted Nobel Prize winner Robert Solow, who once said he has a trade deficit with his barber, “who doesn’t buy a darned thing from me.”
White House defends Trump’s use of emergency powers
In its own filing on September 19, the Trump administration doubled down, saying the tariffs were needed to “rectify America’s country-killing trade deficits.” The White House warned that without tariffs, the country would become poor, and with tariffs, it would thrive. “To the president, these cases present a stark choice: With tariffs, we are a rich nation; without tariffs, we are a poor nation,” the brief stated.
Outside groups also backed Trump. The American Center for Law and Justice said the president was the “sole organ” in foreign policy and warned the courts not to interfere. “When federal courts second-guess presidential determinations about international emergencies and economic threats,” they said, “they undermine the constitutional framework that has governed our Republic for over two centuries.”
But the pressure isn’t just legal. Markets and trading partners have been rattled for years as Trump used tariff threats as bargaining chips. His cabinet went so far as to tell a federal court in August that reversing the tariffs would cause a major diplomatic blowup. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent warned it could trigger a “dangerous diplomatic embarrassment.”
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