858
MACHINES CORP.
Opinion of the Court
the contrary ignored "the central holding of Michelin that the absolute ban is only of 'Imposts or Duties' and not of all taxes." Ibid.
The distinction between imposts or duties and taxes is especially pertinent in light of the peculiar definitional analysis we chose in Michelin. Finding substantial ambiguity in the phrase "Imposts or Duties," we "decline[d] to presume it was intended to embrace taxation that does not create the evils the Clause was specifically intended to eliminate." 423 U. S., at 293-294. We entirely bypassed the etymological inquiry into the proper meaning of the terms "impost" and "duty," and instead created a regime in which those terms are conclusions to be drawn from an examination into whether a particular assessment "was the type of exaction that was regarded as objectionable by the Framers of the Constitution." Id., at 286. We are not prepared to say that the word "Tax" is "sufficiently ambiguous," id., at 293, that we may ignore its common, and usually expansive,6 meaning in favor of an Export Clause decisional rule in which a tax is not a "Tax" unless it discriminates against exports. Consequently, Michelin and Washington Stevedoring, which held that the assessments in question were not "Imposts or Duties" at all, do not logically validate the assessment at issue in this case, which, by all accounts, remains a "Tax."
It is not intuitively obvious that Michelin's three-pronged analysis of the Framers' concerns is really just another way of stating a nondiscrimination principle. But even if it were, the Government cannot reasonably rely on Michelin to govern the Export Clause because Michelin drew its analysis around the phrase "Imposts or Duties" and expressly ex-6 Though Michelin discusses "taxes" in terms of "every exaction," 423 U. S., at 290, it also suggests that at the time of the founding "probably only capitation, land, and general property exactions were known by the term 'tax' rather than the term 'duty,' " id., at 291. In any event, the Michelin Court understood that the terms used in the Export Clause were broader than those used in the Import-Export Clause.
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