This is an op/ed from Donald Bryson, president and CEO of the Locke Foundation in Raleigh.
In October 2024, North Carolinians marked the 250th anniversary of the Edenton Tea Party. It was a proud moment: a group of determined women in a quiet coastal town stood up to British tyranny by rejecting unfair trade regulations and taxation without representation. They didn’t throw tea in the harbor — they signed their names to a declaration of principle. Their message was clear: taxation, even on trade, without consent is tyranny.
Two hundred fifty years later, history echoed loudly.
On April 2, President Donald Trump signed a sweeping executive order directing the U.S. Trade Representative and the Department of Commerce to impose reciprocal tariffs on countries that maintain higher tariffs or restrictive trade barriers against American goods. The legal justification? A declaration of national economic emergency under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) and the Trade Expansion Act of 1962.
While many Americans, including North Carolinians, support fairer global trade, the way this policy was enacted is troubling.
As the wise King Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes, “what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun.” Tariffs are no novelty. Their economic consequences are well known: distortions, retaliation and higher costs for consumers. Sir Robert Walpole, Britain’s first de facto prime minister, popularized tariffs in 1721 to raise revenue and shield domestic producers, only to find himself managing the fallout. Today, Americans once again face taxation through tariffs imposed without a vote from their elected representatives.
This is not just an economic issue. It’s a constitutional one.
The Real Price of Tariffs
Trade isn’t abstract — it’s the backbone of North Carolina’s modern economy. According to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, North Carolina exported a record $42.8 billion in goods in 2024 alone. As of 2021, more than 1.1 million jobs in the state were supported by trade. Our top export markets — Canada, Mexico, and China — are all in the crosshairs of this new policy.
Key sectors of North Carolina’s economy, including aerospace, semiconductors, pharmaceuticals and chemical manufacturing, depend on reliable access to global markets. Tariffs are taxes, and they rarely go unanswered. Retaliatory tariffs, such as China’s announcement of a 34% tariff on all U.S. goods, could shrink demand abroad for Johnston County’s farmers, Forsyth County’s manufacturers and Wake County’s engineers. At the same time, consumers and businesses in the United States will see higher prices for imported components, finished goods, and raw materials.
And yet, not a single member of Congress voted on it.
Congress Must Reclaim Its Role
The Constitution gives Congress — not the president — the power to “lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises” and to “regulate commerce with foreign nations.” However, over the past half-century, Congress has gradually ceded much of this authority to the executive branch, creating legal ambiguity that modern presidents have exploited to impose sweeping trade measures under emergency declarations. It may be legal, but it violates the Constitution’s spirit.
The people duly elected President Trump, but the people elected a president, not a king, and they did so with the expectation that he would govern within the bounds of the Constitution.
President Trump’s April 2 executive order is particularly expansive. It defines unfair trade not just by tariff levels, but by “quantitative restrictions, licensing regimes, or discriminatory domestic subsidies.” It grants the executive branch unilateral discretion to determine when a country is in violation — and to impose penalties without congressional oversight.
This is taxation by decree.
What makes this moment even more poignant is its timing. In 1774, the women of Edenton didn’t protest British taxes because of the amount. They protested the principle. They opposed laws made without their input, by people who did not represent them. They understood what our Founders would later enshrine in the Constitution: liberty requires not only limits on power, but accountability for how that power is used.
We can and should advocate for fair trade. We can and should protect American workers. But we must also protect our form of government. When one person can impose taxes on hundreds of billions of dollars in goods without a vote, we have altered the very structure of our republic.
History reminds us to stay vigilant against power without consent.
Donald Bryson is president and CEO of the John Locke Foundation in Raleigh.