The Constitutional Allocation of Economic Power: Disciplining Executive Authority over Tariffs in the United States and India’s Functional Alternative to the Major Questions Doctrine

The decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Donald J. Trump¹ is best understood not as a trade dispute, but as a structural judgment about who gets to decide questions of economic power in the American constitutional order.

The decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Donald J. Trump² is best understood not as a trade dispute, but as a structural judgment about who gets to decide questions of economic power in the American constitutional order. The tariffs were merely the vehicle. The real issue was whether the executive could convert a broadly worded emergency statute into a standing source of fiscal authority.

If we consider the plain facts, this dispute arose when the Trump administration invoked the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, 1977 (IEEPA)³ to impose sweeping tariffs on a range of imports, justifying the move on the basis of an asserted economic emergency linked to trade imbalances and national security concerns. The petitioners, including Learning Resources, Inc., challenged these measures on the ground that IEEPA, properly read, authorises the regulation of financial transactions and property interests in times of genuine emergency, but does not extend to the imposition of tariffs, which have historically been governed by more specific statutory frameworks and rooted in Congress’s taxing power. Counsel for the government argued that the statute’s broad language — particularly its reference to regulating “transactions” involving foreign interests — was sufficiently capacious to include tariffs as an instrument of economic pressure, especially in light of the executive’s institutional competence in matters of foreign affairs.

The challengers, by contrast, emphasised both text and structure, contending that accepting such an interpretation would effectively allow the President to bypass Congress and unilaterally redesign trade policy under the guise of emergency regulation. The Supreme Court ultimately sided with the petitioners, holding that the tariffs could not be sustained under IEEPA. It reasoned that neither the text nor the historical practice surrounding the statute supported such a significant transfer of fiscal authority and that accepting the government’s position would collapse the constitutional distinction between regulation and taxation. In doing so, the Court framed the central issue not merely as one of statutory interpretation, but as a structural question about the permissible scope of delegated economic power, concluding that the absence of clear congressional authorisation was decisive in a context carrying such substantial economic and political consequences.

Anchoring its reasoning in Article I, Section 8, it treated tariffs as a paradigmatic legislative function. To permit their imposition under the IEEPA would not simply stretch statutory language. It would reallocate constitutional power. The executive would, in effect, acquire the ability to design trade policy through the backdoor of emergency regulation. The judgment is thus less about statutory interpretation in the narrow sense and more about preserving the allocation of economic authority embedded in the constitutional text.

What gives the decision its distinctive force, however, is the court’s reliance on the major questions doctrine.⁴ The doctrine operates as a brake on expansive executive interpretation. Where a regulatory action carries vast economic or political consequences, the courts will not assume that Congress silently authorised it. In Learning Resources, the scale of the tariffs made the case almost inevitable. The economic impact was too large and the statutory hook too thin.

Yet the doctrine is doing more work than it openly admits. Formally, it is a rule of interpretation. Functionally, it resembles a shadow version of the non-delegation principle. Rather than invalidating statutes for granting excessive discretion, the Court narrows their reach by demanding clarity at the point of application. This allows the judiciary to discipline executive overreach without confronting the institutional costs of reviving a robust non-delegation doctrine. In that sense, the major questions doctrine is not modest. It is a strategic doctrinal substitute.

Its lineage makes this clear. In Food and Drug Admn. v. Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp.⁵, the Court resisted an attempt by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to regulate tobacco absent clear congressional authorisation. In Utility Air Regulatory Group v. Environmental Protection Agency⁶ and later in West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency⁷, it refined the idea that agencies cannot discover sweeping regulatory authority in ancillary statutory provisions. Learning Resources extends this logic into the domain of economic emergency powers.⁸ The message is consistent: Statutory ambiguity cannot sustain structural transformations.

At the same time, the doctrine introduces a quiet but significant shift in judicial role. By requiring courts to identify what counts as “major”, it inevitably entrusts them with a threshold judgment that is neither purely legal nor entirely neutral. Scale, impact and political salience are not self-defining categories. They require evaluation. In Learning Resources, the tariffs easily crossed that threshold. In harder cases, the line will be less obvious. The doctrine thus risks converting courts into gatekeepers of policy significance, a role that sits uneasily with traditional accounts of judicial restraint.

This is where the comparison with India becomes analytically useful. Under Article 246 read with Entry 83 of the Union List, the power to impose tariffs is clearly legislative. Article 73 ensures that executive power follows legislative competence, while Article 265 requires that taxation rest on authority of law. Structurally, therefore, the Constitution of India arrives at a similar baseline: fiscal power is legislative and the executive acts through delegation.

Where the two systems diverge is in how courts police the boundary. The Supreme Court of India has not developed anything analogous to the major questions doctrine. Instead, it relies on a combination of delegation limits and substantive review. Considering Delhi Laws Act, 1912, In re⁹, the Court accepted broad delegation but insisted that essential legislative functions cannot be abdicated. That principle is rarely enforced aggressively at the threshold. Rather, Indian Courts tend to intervene after the fact, testing executive action against constitutional standards.

Those standards are well developed. Beginning with E.P. Royappa v. State of T.N.¹⁰ and deepened in Maneka Gandhi v. Union of India¹¹; arbitrariness under Article 14 became a central tool. Later, in K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India¹², proportionality added a structured method of review. These doctrines allow courts to invalidate executive action even where statutory language is broad, without insisting on ex ante legislative specificity.

Recent structural cases reinforce this pattern. In State (NCT of Delhi) v. Union of India¹³, the Court protected the domain of the elected government against executive overreach by the Lieutenant Governor, not by demanding clearer statutes, but by invoking principles of representative democracy and federal balance. Similarly, in Anoop Baranwal v. Union of India¹⁴, the Court intervened to secure institutional independence in the absence of legislation, again relying on constitutional structure rather than interpretive thresholds.

Set against this backdrop, Learning Resources highlights a sharper, more front-loaded American approach. The US Court prevents executive expansion at the point of statutory interpretation. The Indian Court often permits expansion but polices its exercise through constitutional review. Each approach has costs. The American model risks enlarging judicial discretion under the guise of interpretation. The Indian model risks tolerating overly broad delegations and relying on litigation to correct them.

The contrast becomes even more apparent when the logic of Learning Resources is extended beyond tariffs. Consider the debate around Donald Trump’s decision to initiate strikes against Iran without prior congressional authorisation. One might be tempted to frame such action as a “major question”, given its scale and consequences. But the analogy quickly breaks down. The major questions doctrine is anchored in statutory interpretation, not in the constitutional law of war powers. Questions of military force are filtered through Article II, congressional war powers and statutes like the War Powers Resolution. Courts, invoking the political question doctrine, have largely stayed their hand. The discipline imposed in Learning Resources does not easily migrate into this domain.

This limitation is revealing. It shows that the major questions doctrine is not a general theory of constitutional control over executive power. It is a targeted instrument designed for the administrative State. Its strength lies in forcing Congress to speak clearly when delegating economically transformative authority. Its weakness lies in the discretion it gives courts to decide when that clarity is required.

For Indian constitutional law, this creates a genuine choice rather than an obvious path. The underlying concern — preventing executive appropriation of legislative power — is shared. But the method differs. Importing the major questions doctrine would shift Indian Courts toward a more aggressive, threshold-based scrutiny of statutory interpretation. That would sit uneasily with an existing framework that already equips courts with robust post-delegation review through Articles 14, 19 and 21. It would also introduce a new indeterminacy: the need to classify questions as “major”, a task that would inevitably draw courts deeper into policy evaluation.

The tariff judgment, therefore, does more than resolve a dispute under IEEPA¹⁵. It crystallises a divergence in constitutional technique. The United States is moving toward a model in which legislative clarity is enforced at the gateway of administrative power. India continues to rely on substantive constitutional review to discipline that power after it is exercised. Neither model is complete. But Learning Resources makes one thing clear: The balance between legislature, executive and judiciary is no longer being negotiated only through constitutional text. It is increasingly being shaped by the interpretive doctrines courts choose to deploy, and the institutional roles they are willing to assume in doing so.

In the immediate aftermath of Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump¹⁶, there was no meaningful attempt by the Trump administration to secure fresh congressional authorisation for the tariffs and no such approval was ultimately obtained. The Court’s message was unambiguous: Measures of such economic consequence must rest on clear legislative sanction, not executive innovation. Its real effect is forward-looking, compelling future administrations to either operate within defined statutory limits or return to Congress. Transposed hypothetically into the Indian context, such a standard would invite courts to scrutinise executive claims to fiscal power at the very threshold, potentially halting them for want of explicit legislative backing. Yet, whether the Indian constitutional scheme truly permits this kind of front-loaded examination — or whether it risks meandering into judicial overreach — remains an open question, one that sits uneasily with a system that has traditionally preferred to test executive action after the fact rather than pre-empt it at the point of assumption.