The administration keeps telling the courts that sweeping unilateral tariff power is necessary because tariffs will “rebalance trade” and “shrink the deficit.”
This chart shows the opposite.
US Trade Deficit (first 8 months):
• 2024: –$571B
• 2025: –$714B
• +25% YoY increase.
If tariffs were working, the deficit would be closing.
Instead, it’s exploding.
That matters because right now SCOTUS is weighing whether to bless the broadest interpretation of presidential tariff authority in modern history. And when the Court evaluates executive power, it looks for a rational connection between the authority claimed and the results delivered.
Here, the data speaks plainly:
• Tariffs didn’t reduce imports.
• They didn’t spur meaningful domestic production.
• They didn’t strengthen exports.
• They widened the deficit they were supposed to fix.
So the White House is effectively asking SCOTUS:
“Give us more power, even though the outcome is the opposite of what we promised.”
Whether you’re pro-tariff or anti-tariff, you should care about that logic.
Because it’s the same logic every administration uses to justify power grabs:
“Trust us. It’s working.”
This chart shows it isn’t.
And if the Court signs off anyway, it sets a precedent far bigger than trade policy:
presidential economic authority without measurable results.
That’s how democracies drift into rule-by-decree, quietly, bureaucratically, through “emergency” powers that never get rolled back.
The deficit is the canary.
The case is the coal mine.