Tariffs and "International Payments Problems"

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Last week, the Supreme Court ruled that the arbitrary imposition of tariffs using the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) was illegal. But their reasoning was somewhat strange. Rather than address whether there are any ongoing emergencies that would justify the capricious use of tariffs, as the administration claimed, the justices instead argued about the meaning of the word “regulate”.Now the administration has come back with a different legal justification—Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974—for a new set of tariffs. Quite a few lawyers and economists have argued that this is also illegal.Unlike IEEPA, there is no ambiguity about whether the words in the law allow the administration to impose tariffs and/or quotas. But there is a debate, summarized nicely by , about whether the circumstances that could enable the use of worldwide tariffs under section 122 are even possible in 2026. The law is only supposed to be used when:Fundamental international payments problems require special import measures to restrict imports— (1) to deal with large and serious United States balance-of-payments deficits, (2) to prevent an imminent and significant depreciation of the dollar in foreign exchange markets, or (3) to cooperate with other countries in correcting an international balance-of-payments disequilibriumWhat are “fundamental international payments problems”? What are “large and serious United States balance-of-payments deficits”? What is an “international balance-of-payments disequilibrium”?I am not a lawyer, but I know enough about both the history of this perio…