B.1. Congressional Authority

Congress has the sole power to levy, suspend, or repeal taxes, duties, tariffs, and excises. This power is non-delegable.

There is a lot packed into this single sentence!

“Sole power.” Only Congress. Not the President. Not the Department of State. Not anyone else. Congress.

“Levy, suspend, or repeal.” Those three words pretty much run the whole gamut, don’t they? Presidents have not only imposed tariffs, but sometimes they have suspended or repealed them. The Charter’s language is unambiguous – only Congress can do any one of the three.

“Taxes, duties, tariffs, and excises.” This also covers a pretty broad spectrum. In short, it’s intended to cover all of the meaningful revenue streams for the U.S. government.

“Non-delegable.” Congress can’t delegate this Power to anyone else.

There definitely will be those who object to tariffs, duties, and excises being included in this list. “This strips the President of the ability to negotiate trade!” But that’s not true. It strips the President of the ability to unilaterally decide what foreign taxes apply or don’t on their own say-so.

That power doesn’t belong to the President under the Constitution of 1789. The founders didn’t intend the President to have that ability. Article I, Section 8 gives Congress the power to tax, but Article II does not confer similar power on the Executive Branch. In Federalist No. 31, while arguing in favor of congressional power to tax, says, “A government ought to contain in itself every power requisite to the full accomplishment of the objects committed to its care, and to the complete execution of the trusts for which it is responsible, free from every other control but a regard to the public good and to the sense of the people.”[1] I ask you to note that he doesn’t say that one of the controls is the Executive Branch, and his broader argumentation in the article is specifically regarding the power of Congress to impose taxes.

The President’s current powers in this realm come from delegation through statute. There are well over a dozen statutes that gradually expanded the President’s authority to impose or reduce tariffs for a variety of reasons. The McKinley Tariff Act of 1890[2] and the Trade Expansion Act of 1962[3] are just two of over a dozen acts that gradually delegated this power to the President. None of these derived from the Constitution of 1789; it was all delegated to the President by Congress.

So, if there have been so many acts to delegate Congressional power to the President in this respect, why not preserve that? All those generations of legislators must have had their reasons for passing that authority on to the President, right? Maybe. What those reasons were, I won’t speculate, but humans generally act with purpose. Popular contrary opinions aside, members of Congress are and always have been human, so it’s safe to assume they acted with purpose. That doesn’t change a fundamental point. The power of the purse is the most powerful of congressional duties and powers. On that basis alone, it shouldn’t be delegated. More importantly, taxes – any kind of taxes – can have severe consequences for the economy. Therefore, they can have severe consequences for the property rights of the people. No single person should have the power to wield that great a power.

“What about foreign sanctions designed to help achieve foreign policy goals?” This doesn’t affect foreign sanctions. They aren’t taxes. They are penalties on bad actors. Embargoes and similar instruments aren’t covered by this provision. And, in general, they don’t involve payments because collecting payments from hostile governments would be virtually impossible. So, logically, those aren’t taxes.

---

[1] THE FEDERALIST No. 31 (Alexander Hamilton), avalon.law.yale.edu/18^th_century/fed31.asp (last visited Aug. 12, 2025).

[2] An Act to reduce the revenue and equalize duties on imports, and for other purposes [McKinley Tariff Act of 1890], ch. 1244, 26 Stat. 567 (1890).

[3] An Act to promote the general welfare, foreign policy, and security of the United States through international trade agreements and through adjustment assistance to domestic industry, agriculture, and labor, and for other purposes [Trade Expansion Act of 1962], Pub. L. No. 87-794, 76 Stat. 872 (1962).