For months, President Donald Trump and his top advisers described tariffs as an economic cure-all, one that would bring in revenue to pay down the national debt, offset tax cuts, support struggling farmers and even provide dividend checks to Americans.

But when the White House’s solicitor general, D. John Sauer, defended Trump’s expansive use of tariffs before the Supreme Court on Wednesday, he expressed a much different view. Despite all the public justifications of the tariffs, Sauer suggested that they were not really about the money at all.

“These are regulatory tariffs,” Sauer said. “They are not revenue-raising tariffs. The fact that they raise revenue is only incidental.”

Job of Congress

At the center of the case is the question of whether Trump overstepped his legal authority b

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