The Grievance Audit holds the modern federal record up against the twenty-seven grievances of the Declaration of Independence. Quote the grievance, quote what the Founders built, lay out today’s record with citations. Terms per Black’s Law Dictionary. Reporting on documents, not legal advice.
The grievance
“For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world” — Declaration of Independence, para. 18 (1776)
The colonists had watched the Crown throttle colonial commerce by decree. The lesson they drew was structural: the power to open, close, and tax trade is a species of the power to reach into people’s pockets, and it must sit with the branch that answers to those people.
What the Founders built
They handed the whole of it to Congress, and pointedly withheld it from the executive:
- U.S. Const. art. I, § 8, cl. 1: “The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises.” Tariffs are duties — a taxing power.
- U.S. Const. art. I, § 8, cl. 3: Congress regulates “Commerce with foreign Nations.”
As the Supreme Court would put it in 2026, the framers gave “Congress alone… access to the pockets of the people,” with no part of the taxing power vested in the executive. The purse was the legislature’s, on purpose.
The terms, per Black’s
- Tariff — Black’s Law Dictionary (12th ed. 2024): a duty or tax imposed by a government on imported (or, rarely, exported) goods.
- Impost — per Black’s, a tax, especially a customs duty on imported goods.
- Delegation (of powers) — per Black’s, the transfer of authority by one branch of government to another, or to an agency, to act on its behalf.
The record today
The purse-power drifted to the presidency — by Congress’s own hand. Across the twentieth century Congress handed the executive broad authority to adjust trade by decree: Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 (19 U.S.C. § 1862) for “national security”; Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 (19 U.S.C. § 2411) for unfair foreign practices; and the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977, 50 U.S.C. § 1701 et seq., for national emergencies. Presidents of both parties used these tools to tax and restrict trade with the stroke of a pen — the taxing power the Constitution assigned to Congress, exercised increasingly from the Oval Office. This is the same story told in Audit No. 2: authority delegated away from the elected legislature until the exception swallowed the rule.
In 2025 the drift hit its high-water mark — and in 2026 the Court reversed part of it. After a sweeping 2025 tariff program imposed under IEEPA, the Supreme Court ruled on February 20, 2026 (No. 24-1287) that IEEPA does not authorize the president to impose tariffs at all. Chief Justice Roberts applied the “major questions doctrine,” reasoning that it “appl[ies] with particular force where, as here, the purported delegation involves the core congressional power of the purse,” and noting that in nearly fifty years no president had ever used IEEPA to levy tariffs. The people’s purse, the Court held, had not been silently handed to the president by an emergency statute.
But the drift is curtailed, not ended. The ruling struck only the IEEPA tariffs. Tariffs imposed under Section 232 (including duties on steel, aluminum, copper, and automobiles) and Section 301 remain in force, because those statutes expressly authorize the president to act. The executive still wields substantial power to tax trade by decree — just not under the emergency law the Court found too thin to carry it. Congress could reclaim the rest tomorrow; as of now, it has mostly chosen not to.
By the numbers
- Art. I, § 8 — constitutional home of the tariff/trade power: Congress, not the president
- 1962 / 1974 / 1977 — Section 232, Section 301, and IEEPA: the statutes by which Congress delegated trade power to the executive
- ~50 years — length of time IEEPA existed before a president first used it to impose tariffs (2025) — a novelty the Court held against it
- Feb. 20, 2026 — Supreme Court strikes the IEEPA tariffs on “power of the purse” grounds (No. 24-1287; CRS LSB11398)
- Still in force — Section 232 and Section 301 tariffs, left untouched by the ruling
The counterweight
The strongest case for the modern arrangement. A twenty-first-century economy needs a trade policy that can move faster than Congress legislates — responding to a foreign dumping campaign or a genuine security threat in weeks, not sessions — and Congress chose, through duly enacted statutes, to give the executive that speed. This is delegation the people’s representatives voted for, not a usurpation, and it comes with limits: Section 232 requires a security finding, Section 301 an investigation, and, as 2026 proved, the courts stand ready to say when a president has reached past what Congress actually authorized. The system, defenders note, worked — the executive overreached under IEEPA, and a cross-ideological Court pulled it back while leaving the legitimate delegations intact. That is the constitutional design self-correcting, not failing.
True — and, once again, the correction concedes the condition. The taxing power the Founders deliberately kept from the executive now sits substantially with it, exercised by decree, contested only at its outer edge, and reclaimed by Congress not at all. It took a Supreme Court, in 2026, to remind everyone whose purse it was.
The audit
The 1776 grievance was an executive strangling trade by decree. The 2026 record is a Congress that handed much of its trade-taxing power to the presidency across three statutes, a president who pushed that power to its limit in 2025, and a Supreme Court that in 2026 drew one hard line — the emergency statute cannot be stretched to tax the people — while leaving the executive’s other trade powers standing. The purse is still the people’s, in principle. In practice, a good deal of it is administered from a desk they did not elect.
Nullum tributum sine lege — no tax without law. In 2026 the Court added the corollary the Founders assumed: and no law means no tax the president may invent alone.
Next in the series: the machinery of representation itself — the legislature interfered with, dissolved, and bypassed.
Sources:
- Declaration of Independence (1776) — National Archives transcript
- U.S. Const. art. I, § 8 (cls. 1, 3) — taxing and foreign-commerce powers
- International Emergency Economic Powers Act, 50 U.S.C. § 1701 et seq. — emergency economic authority
- Section 232, Trade Expansion Act of 1962, 19 U.S.C. § 1862 — national-security tariffs
- Section 301, Trade Act of 1974, 19 U.S.C. § 2411 — unfair-practice tariffs
- Supreme Court — opinion in No. 24-1287 (Feb. 20, 2026) — IEEPA does not authorize tariffs
- Congressional Research Service — Supreme Court Rules Against IEEPA Tariffs (LSB11398) — analysis of the ruling
- Black’s Law Dictionary (12th ed. 2024) — definitions: tariff; impost; delegation of powers