The Supreme Court on Friday struck down most of President Trump’s tariffs after finding the International Emergency Economic Powers Act did not give him the power to impose sweeping protectionist measures.
The Court upheld an earlier federal circuit court ruling in a 6–3 decision, with Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Brett Kavanaugh dissenting.
“Based on two words separated by 16 others in . . . IEEPA,” Chief Justice John Roberts writes, “‘regulate’ and ‘importation’ — the President asserts the independent power to impose tariffs on imports from any country, of any product, at any rate, for any amount of time. Those words cannot bear such weight.”
Trump was the first president to try to use the 1977 IEEPA to create new tariffs through executive actions; the act allows the president to authorize emergency economic actions in the face of a foreign threat, such as embargoes or sanctions, but it says nothing about tariffs.
Trump enacted sweeping “liberation day” tariffs last year to tax imports coming from numerous countries around the world. He argued the tariffs were necessary to end decades of unfair trade practices and to rebuild the U.S industrial base.
The decision does not strike down all of Trump’s tariffs, only those that were imposed under the IEEPA. The president imposed tariffs on steel and aluminum using different laws, so those tariffs will remain in place.
However, his sweeping “reciprocal” tariffs, including a 34 percent levy on goods from China and a 10 percent baseline for other countries, are impacted by the decision. The 25 percent tariff Trump imposed on some goods from Canada, China and Mexico for their failure to control the flow of fentanyl are also impacted by the Court’s decision.
In remarks from the White House on Friday, Trump said the ruling is “deeply disappointing” and that he is “ashamed of certain members of the Court … for not having the courage to do what’s right for the country.”
He said foreign countries that have been “ripping us off for years are happy,” but that they “won’t be dancing for long,” as he plans to find alternative pathways to reimpose his tariffs.
He said Friday he would sign an executive order to enact a 10 percent global tariff.
Trump also read aloud a portion of Justice Kavanaugh’s dissent, in which he says the Court’s ruling “might not substantially constrain a President’s ability to order tariffs going forward.”
“That is because numerous other federal statutes authorize the President to impose tariffs and might justify most (if not all) of the tariffs at issue in this case—albeit perhaps with a few additional procedural steps that IEEPA, as an emergency statute, does not require,” Kavanaugh wrote. He goes on to cite several statutes that Trump could use to impose tariffs, including the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, the Trade Act of 1974, and the Tariff Act of 1930.
Trump said he can now “go a different direction which is even stronger than our original choice,” and that he will be able to now “charge much more than I’m charging.”
Kavanaugh, in his dissent, also notes there will now be at least two complexities the administration will have to navigate because of the Court’s decision: a potential refund process and the effect on trade deals that came about thanks to the president’s tariffs.
“The United States may be required to refund billions of dollars to importers who paid the IEEPA tariffs, even though some importers may have already passed on costs to consumers or others,” he writes.
The ruling does not make clear whether the federal government will have to refund the tariffs it has collected.
Kavanaugh adds: “A second issue is the decision’s effect on the current trade deals. Because IEEPA tariffs have helped facilitate trade deals worth trillions of dollars—including with foreign nations from China to the United Kingdom to Japan, the Court’s decision could generate uncertainty regarding various trade agreements. That process, too, could be difficult.”
The decision’s impacts on trade will be massive — the government has collected nearly $134 billion in levies through December 14 under the IEEPA tariffs, according to the Washington Post.
We Pay the Tariffs, a coalition of more than 800 small businesses, called on the Trump administration to quickly refund the money they had paid because of the tariffs.
“The administration’s only responsible course of action now is to establish a fast, efficient, and automatic refund process that returns tariff money to the businesses that paid it. Small businesses cannot afford to wait months or years while bureaucratic delays play out, nor can they afford expensive litigation just to recover money that was unlawfully collected from them in the first place. These businesses need their money back now,” said Dan Anthony, executive director of We Pay the Tariffs.
More than 1,000 firms have filed lawsuits seeking tariffs refunds.
Trump previously suggested the Court should rule in his favor because it would be a “total disaster” for the U.S. if the tariffs stopped.
“Everybody should pray that the United States Supreme Court has the Wisdom and Genius to allow Tariffs to GUARD our National Security, and our Financial Freedom!” Trump wrote in Truth Social in December.
He said in August that refunding the tariffs “would be 1929 all over again, a GREAT DEPRESSION!”