Bessent says he’ll have ‘ringside seat’ at Supreme Court tariff hearing

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent revealed on Monday he plans to attend opening arguments debating the legality of President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs at the Supreme Court this week. 

Bessent said he “doesn’t think” the country’s highest court will issue a ruling striking down Trump’s ability to use the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to issue the global “Liberation Day” tariffs, during an interview on Fox News’ Jesse Watters Primetime show. 

However, Bessent said he is going to “sit, hopefully in the front row and … have a ringside seat,” when the court begins hearing the case on Wednesday. And the treasury secretary dismissed concerns his presence might pose an “intimidation” to justices as they weigh legal arguments for and against Trump’s authority to wield the tariffs without congressional signoff.  

“I am there [at the Supreme Court] to emphasize that this is an economic emergency. National security is economic security. Economic Security is national security. As a treasury secretary of the United States, I’m in charge of maintaining both,” he told Watters. 

Justices this week will hear two consolidated legal cases challenging the Liberation Day tariffs, along with tariffs the president aimed at Canada, Mexico, and China over their role in contributing to the United States’ fentanyl epidemic. 

Critics have challenged the president’s use of IEEPA to bypass Congress in order to issue the broad levies, arguing that Trump abused the 1977 law to implement his economic agenda. 

“IEEPA does not give the President such vast unilateral power,” one of the briefs to the high court from the companies suing over the tariffs reads. “Indeed, it does not give the President any taxing or tariffing power. Despite being the ‘most frequently cited emergency authority’ … —invoked 69 times since its enactment in 1977—’no President until now has ever invoked [IEEPA]—or its predecessor [statute]—to impose tariffs.’”

Bessent argued Monday that Trump would not have been able to garner major concessions from China and other global competitors without invoking IEEPA to provoke negotiations and concessions on trade, fentanyl, and other matters through tariffs. 

“Back in the spring, he put IEEPA tariffs on China, and last week, in Korea, the Chinese agreed to start working to bring down the precursors for fentanyl. If fentanyl is not a national emergency, what is? China, on October 8, threatened to curtail rare earths to the entire world, the entire world. President Trump threatened to put on 100% tariffs and protected our national security using the IEEPA power,” the treasury secretary said. 

“And then finally, these big trade deficits we’ve had for years in economics — there’s something called a tipping point, and we were at the tipping point. Fortunately, President Trump came in. He put on the tariffs. He is rebalancing global trade in favor of the U.S., and he has prevented an economic crisis,” Bessent added. 

Trump announced Sunday evening he would not attend the Supreme Court’s open arguments because he didn’t want to “distract from the importance of this Decision.” 

During an appearance on CBS’s 60 Minutes released over the weekend, Trump spent a hefty part of the prime-time interview touting the importance of tariffs, which he credited for helping end “six of the eight wars that I’ve ended,” and swiftly bringing about major trade concessions from countries, including China. If the administration was forced to ask Congress for tariff approval, lawmakers “would be sitting around for years debating whether or not we should use tariffs,” Trump said, adding he believes the lawsuit challenging his use of IEEPA “was instituted and backed by foreign countries that have been ripping us off for years.” 

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“And if we lose that lawsuit, they’ll continue to rip us off, and you’re not gonna end up with a country. I think it’s the most important subject discussed by the Supreme Court in 100 years,” the president warned. 

“You can’t have Congress, well, hundreds of people have to look. They can’t even agree to continue a country. You can’t have Congress here. This has to be quick and nimble,” he added. “If I didn’t have the power of tariff, we would be– we would be like a subject nation. We’d be subject to everyone else. Everybody uses tariffs on us. If I wasn’t allowed to use tariffs on them, we would be a third rate– we would be a third-world nation.”