The Supreme Court’s shooting down of President Donald Trump’s emergency tariffs on Friday didn’t require any great legal analysis but a simple recognition of the reality that no emergency existed in the first place to justify the sweeping tariffs – a point Trump himself has made over and over again in recent months.

Trump has long declared himself the “tariff king” and, in all three of his presidential campaigns, has argued against free trade that he has dubiously claimed “screws” the American people. In order to right that grievance last year, Trump announced global sweeping tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). The IEEPA, which was signed into law in 1977, gives the president the authority to go around Congress to regulate international trade after declaring a national emergency on the sole grounds of an “unusual and extraordinary threat.”

Trump had repeatedly flaunted his own administration’s justification for the tariffs by making off-the-cuff remarks boasting of their success. He has regularly said he’s using his tariffs as a negotiating tactic with other countries, pushing allies and foes alike to bend to his will.

In January, Trump wildly threatened to levy tariffs against European countries that didn’t support his takeover of Greenland. In that case, turning the dynamic on its head as instead of using tariffs to combat a threat to the U.S., he used them to make NATO allies feel like they were, in fact, under threat from the U.S.

Trump also threatened tariffs on countries doing business with Iran, as a way to counter the Iranian regime’s mass slaughter of protesters. As well-intentioned as that threat may have been, it again made clear he was operating far outside the bounds of the IEEPA.

Trump had also made wild claims about the success of his tariffs, which in no way had to do with combating some “extraordinary threat” from abroad. Last December, Trump went so far as to claim his tariffs could bring in enough revenue (like a tax, which of course only Congress can levy) that they could replace income tax altogether.

“And I believe that at some point in the not-too-distant future, you won’t even have income tax to pay. Because the money we’re taking in is so great, it’s so enormous, that you’re not going to have income tax to pay,” Trump said during a Cabinet meeting.

But, no comment was so blatant from Trump as what he said during a Fox Business interview in which he told Larry Kudlow earlier in the month. Trump recalled a phone call with the leader of Switzerland and bragged to Kudlow that he raised tariffs on the country because she was rude to him. Trump told Kudlow:

I got an emergency call from, I believe, the Prime Minister of Switzerland, and she was very aggressive, but nice, but very aggressive. “Sir, we are a small country. We can’t do this. We can do this, we can’t.” I couldn’t get her off the phone. “We are a very small country,” and I said, “You may be small, but we have a $42 billion deficit with you.” “No, no, we’re a small country.” Again and again and again. I couldn’t get her off the phone, so it was at 30 percent. I didn’t really like the way she talked to us, and so instead of giving her a reduction, I raised it to 39 percent.

Ignoring the fact that Switzerland has a president, Trump’s anecdote was just the latest evidence that he viewed his tariffs as more a personal plaything than as the dire emergency measure the law intended them to be.

Justice Neil Gorsuch explained in his concurring opinion striking down the tariffs why he viewed Trump’s actions as so far outside the spirit of the law.

“For those who think it important for the Nation to impose more tariffs, I understand that today’s decision will be disappointing. All I can offer them is that most major decisions affecting the rights and responsibilities of the American people (including the duty to pay taxes and tariffs) are funneled through the legislative process for a reason,” wrote Gorsuch, adding:

Yes, legislating can be hard and take time. And, yes, it can be tempting to bypass Congress when some pressing problem arises. But the deliberative nature of the legislative process was the whole point of its design. Through that process, the Nation can tap the combined wisdom of the people’s elected representatives, not just that of one faction or man. There, deliberation tempers impulse, and compromise hammers disagreements into workable solutions.

And because laws must earn such broad support to survive the legislative process, they tend to endure, allowing ordinary people to plan their lives in ways they cannot when the rules shift from day to day. In all, the legislative process helps ensure each of us has a stake in the laws that govern us and in the Nation’s future.

Gorsuch so eloquently explains why Trump, over and over again, revealed just how illegal his tariffs were, because they were never about fighting off some emergency, but instead about fulfilling Trump’s latest impulses, whatever the consequences.

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