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Trump Administration Defiant As Supreme Court Strikes Down Tariffs
- Feb 23
- 3 min read
Written by Piotr Mateusz Kukula
Edited by Francesca Howard and Annika Lilja
On Friday, February 20th, President Trump awoke to news that one of his hallmark policies, tariffs, had just been rebuked. That morning, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump that the President of the United States does not have the authority to impose tariffs on other nations under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). During the economic crisis of the late 1970s, the IEEPA passed both chambers of Congress in an overwhelming bipartisan manner, with the intent to grant the President broad authority to regulate economic transactions after declaring a national emergency in response to a foreign threat. The decision was long-awaited, and was set upon the fact that the Act makes no mention of tariffs, and thus the Commander-in-Chief cannot use it as justification for imposing tariffs.
The decision has significant implications for the scope of executive power. Chief Justice John Roberts, who wrote for the majority of the six justices, stated that the Constitution grants the power to tax and tariff imports solely to Congress and therefore the legislative branch, and that the executive branch shall have no engagement in that matter. In the opinion he delivered before the Court, Roberts read that Section 8, Clause 1 of Article I lists that “The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises.” Thus, the question, in essence, was not whether tariffs serve a due need for the nation as a whole, but whether the President and his branch of the government have the authority or jurisdiction to exercise over such powers. The Court did find that under the IEEPA, the law does authorize the President to “regulate” commerce during times of emergency or crisis, but there is not a single mention of the word “tariff” or the authority to levy them, not on an American, not on anyone else.
Chief Justice John Roberts was joined by the liberal minority, comprised of Associate Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Ketanji Brown Jackson, and Elena Kagan, as well as two other conservative appointees, Associate Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch, both of whom were appointed to their roles under the first Trump Administration. The three remaining conservative justices, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Brett Kavanaugh, dissented for somewhat alike reasons. In his sixty-three-page dissenting opinion on the case concurred by justices Alito and Thomas, Kavanaugh argued that the President did not act without congressional discretion and acted on behalf of the legislative branch. Furthermore, Kavanaugh advanced his point by arguing that the established language, specifically “regulate” and “imports,” is overly vague and that the Court therefore does not have dominion over it. The minority also claimed that, following the majority’s opinion, legal precedent and former court rulings would have been widely different from what was actually ruled.
Following the Supreme Court’s striking down his sweeping global tariffs, President Donald J. Trump responded by publicly criticizing his own justices he had sought to appoint, and promising a tariff continuation. He described some of the conservative justices as “unpatriotic” and “disloyal to the Constitution,” lacking the “courage to do what’s right.” He then demanded the Court falsely claiming that the justices have been swayed by foreign lobbyists, interests, and even a “political movement.” Even with the legal setback, Trump signed a new executive order setting all preexisting tariffs at a baseline of 10% on February 20th, which was followed by raising the rate to 15% the next day.
On his social media site, Truth Social, the President argued that the measure was appropriate and that it was the “fully allowed and legally tested” level for tariffs. Invoked under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, the statute allows certain policies to be passed to address “fundamental international payment problems,” which President Donald Trump has widely repeated throughout his second term as president. However, unlike the IEEPA, the President may only keep the tariffs for 150 days without the necessary Congressional approval, and the future of the $175 billion in promised tariff revenue still has to be seen. Since the tariffs have been invalidated, all the revenue is, under legal aspects, permitted to be returned to importers through the U.S. Court of International Trade.
At the heart of the issue are not only the significant legal aspects of tariffs and their impacts on imports and the world economy, but also the political ones. Republicans have been increasingly divided on tariffs and other hallmark Trump Administration economic policies as inflation continues to rise and many constituents are furious at the lack of perceived change. The President’s defiance and ignorance despite a landmark ruling from his own partisan-aligned justices may end up as a double-edged sword heading into the 2026 midterms and the 2028 presidential election.
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