26. Trade · Major · Needs Congress · Contested — excluded from counts
Pass legislation repealing Sections 232, 201, and 301
Printed page 802 26. Trade · from “The Case for Free Trade”
“The second order of business requires Congress to pass legislation repealing Sections 232, 201, and 301. The U.S. Constitution places all taxing authority with Congress and none with the President.”
What has happened
- Not started
No such legislation was enacted, and none was introduced. Of the 104 public laws of the 119th Congress, none amends Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 or Sections 201 or 301 of the Trade Act of 1974. The bills that come nearest would constrain those authorities, not repeal them, and all are still in committee: H.R. 1903, the Congressional Trade Authority Act of 2025, "[t]o amend the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 to impose limitations on the authority of the President to adjust imports"; S. 1272 / H.R. 2665, the Trade Review Act of 2025; H.R. 2712; S. 4563, the Section 232 Public Transparency Act; and S. 5081, the Congressional Trade Powers Reform Act of 2026, introduced 2026-07-22 "[t]o reclaim the authority of Congress over the imposition of duties". A similarly named bill, H.R. 2464 ("Repealing Outdated and Unilateral Tariff Authorities Act"), repeals section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930 — a different authority. The only floor votes on tariffs were on joint resolutions terminating the IEEPA emergency, also a different authority: S.J. Res. 49 failed of passage in the Senate on 2025-04-30.
No action found yet. This entry is the starting point, not a finding.
Research log
What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence
Research notes
- Contested Recommendation from “The Case for Free Trade”; the Congress-side twin of #2109, which asks the President to repeal the same tariffs unilaterally.
- Negative searches run this session:
public-laws.ndjson— all 104 laws listed by title; none is a trade-authority repeal.bills.ndjsontitles matchingtariff|Trade Expansion Act|Trade Act of 1974|Section 232|Section 301(about 40 hits) andTrade Review|Congressional Trade|trade authorit— every hit read; none repeals the three sections.- Bill texts read at govinfo to check what the titles actually do: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/BILLS-119hr2464ih/html/BILLS-119hr2464ih.htm (repeals 19 U.S.C. 1338, section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930 — not 232/201/301), https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/BILLS-119hr1903ih/html/BILLS-119hr1903ih.htm (limits, does not repeal, Section 232), https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/BILLS-119s5081is/html/BILLS-119s5081is.htm (Title I “Authority of Congress over trade actions”).
- The tariff votes that did happen were on the IEEPA emergency, not on these sections:
S.J. Res. 49 (2025-04-30, failed of passage; the motion to table the motion to
reconsider was agreed to 50–49, Record Vote 226), S.J. Res. 88 (2025-10-31, held at the
desk) and H.J. Res. 150 (2026-02-17, referred). All are in the
billsCorpus. They are noted, not counted, because the Quote names Sections 232, 201 and 301. - The Supreme Court’s decision in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump (2026-02-20, https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/24-1287_4gcj.pdf) rests on exactly the constitutional argument the Quote makes — “The Framers did not vest any part of the taxing power in the Executive Branch” — but it reached IEEPA only, and expressly contrasts it with the delegations Congress made “in explicit terms and subject to strict limits”, which is what Sections 232, 201 and 301 are. It is a lead for this item, not Evidence about it.
- Action
- repeal
- Object
- Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 and Sections 201 and 301 of the Trade Act of 1974
- ID
- 2110