Donald Trump’s tariff policy maneuvers this have made it clear that we live in a country where a single man can impose or suspend taxes at will. Trump has, with little more than social media posts and various strokes of a pen, hiked federal sales taxes on imports (i.e., tariffs) with apparently no limit on the size of these taxes or to which goods they are applied. This concentration of power in the hands of a single politician would be shocking to an Americans from the early republic or the nineteenth century when Congress jealously guarded its control over the so-called “power of the purse.”

There once was a time when Americans took seriously the text of the US Constitution which reads in Article I, section 7 that “All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with amendments as on other Bills.”

Over time, though, Congress gradually abandoned its control over tax policy, even though the Supreme Court had ruled in 1825 that Congress could not delegate its core powers—which surely includes the levying of taxes—to some other branch of government. Like so many other unfortunate developments the history of American politics, the president’s modern-day ability to impose unilateral tax policy without the consent of Congress is primarily a twentieth-century innovation. These powers accelerated after 1913 when Congress became more interested in the income tax, and more reliant on income-tax revenue. Not surprisingly, things got worse under Franklin Roosevelt with the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act which granted the president the power to negotiate trade agreements. ……..

How remarkable it is, then, that today’s conservatives—at least the ones who call themselves MAGA—are so enthusiastically committed to handing over untrammeled power to the executive to impose taxes, abolish taxes, or otherwise exercise tax policy with virtually no need to even consult with the duly elected legislature. This way of thinking represents yet another capitulation to the centralizers of state power and the abandonment of the spirit of the American revolution.