One of the largest car audio retailers, Crutchfield, filed a brief with the Supreme Court, asking for relief from the ups and downs of tariffs, which are preventing its business from being able to plan ahead, it said.
The ‘chaos and uncertainty resulting from wild gyrations in the tariffs make rational business planning impossible,’ said the brief, which was filed last Friday, according to CBS19 News.
Crutchfield imports approximately 60 percent of the goods it sells. It said much of its merchandise is not available from US suppliers, so it must be imported.
The Crutchfield brief was filed in support of a group of US retailers in the case of Learning Resources v. Trump, challenging Trump’s tariff authority. On November 5, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on the case. President Trump said the case is so important that he might attend the hearing.
The brief said, “If tariffs can be imposed, increased, decreased, suspended or altered, not through the deliberate legislative process in which both chambers of Congress must agree and the President must sign the legislation, but instead through the changing whim of a single person, then Crutchfield cannot plan for the short term, let alone the long run, because it cannot possibly predict what the household electronics it sells will cost,” according to CBS19 News.
Crutchfield said it must make decisions on the quantities of products to order months in advance. If the President has authority to change tariffs on a dime, this can harm retailers who have already made irrevocable decisions on ordering, sourcing and pricing.
The US has collected nearly $90 billion in tariffs. The US is estimated to bring in $4 trillion in tariffs over the next decade, said CBS19 citing the Congressional Budget Office,
On the other hand, in a Fox News interview on Sunday, Trump said that if the Supreme Court determines the tariffs are unconstitutional, “the U.S. will struggle economically for years,” according to Fox Business.
Simply put, the Supreme Court will decide whether a 1977 law called the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), gives the President authority to impose tariffs on imports. Lower courts have ruled against the President’s power to levy such tariffs. The Trump administration said it can impose them as they are in response to US trade deficits, which it calls a “national emergency.”
Source: CBS 19 News