US Supreme Court strikes down Trump’s global tariffs

Supreme Court struck down Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs that he pursued under a law meant for use in national emergencies, handing a stinging defeat to the Republican president in a landmark opinion on Friday with major implications for the global economy. The justices, in a 6-3 ruling authored by conservative Chief Justice John Roberts, upheld a lower court’s decision that Trump’s use of this 1977 law exceeded his authority. The justices ruled that the law at issue – the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA – did not grant Trump the power he claimed to impose tariffs.

“Our task today is to decide only whether the power to “regulate … importation,” as granted to the president in IEEPA, embraces the power to impose tariffs. It does not,” Roberts wrote in the ruling, quoting the statute’s text that Trump claimed had justified his sweeping tariffs. Trump has leveraged tariffs – taxes on imported goods – as a key economic and foreign policy tool.

They have been central to a global trade war that Trump initiated after he began his second term as president, one that has alienated trading partners, affected financial markets and caused global economic uncertainty. Roberts, citing a prior Supreme Court ruling, wrote that “the president must ‘point to clear congressional authorization’ to justify his extraordinary assertion of the power to impose tariffs,” adding: “He cannot.” The ruling sent U.S. stock indexes, long buffeted by Trump’s unpredictable moves on tariffs, up by the most in more than two weeks and weakened the dollar.

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Treasury yields edged higher. Trump was addressing a gathering of state governors at the White House when he was handed a note from an aide informing him of the Supreme Court decision, according to two sources familiar with the event. Trump appeared visibly frustrated and told the audience that the ruling was a “disgrace” and that he had to do something about the courts, the sources said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

At an event in Georgia on Thursday on the eve of the ruling, Trump said, “Without tariffs … everybody would be bankrupt. Everybody. The whole country would be bankrupt.

… And the language is clear that I have the right to do it as president. I have the right to put tariffs on for national security purposes.” The White House had no immediate comment on the ruling. Justice Brett Kavanaugh, writing a dissent joined by fellow conservatives Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, wrote that the ruling did not necessarily foreclose Trump “from imposing most if not all of these same sorts of tariffs under other statutory authorities,” adding that “the court’s decision is not likely to greatly restrict presidential tariff authority going forward.” Part of the Supreme Court’s majority also declared that such an interpretation would intrude on the powers of Congress and violate a legal principle called the “major questions” doctrine.

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