The Supreme Court struck down large swaths of President Donald Trump’s international tariff agenda on Friday, severely curtailing one of the president’s signature second-term policy projects.
In a 6-3 ruling, the court determined that Trump and his administration had exceeded their tariff powers under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA,) a 1977 law that allows the president to regulate certain aspects of international trade during a declared national emergency. The court did not prescribe any requirements or methods through which the administration would be forced to roll back the hundreds of punitive tariffs it has imposed on trade partners around the globe, but made abundantly clear that Trump was operating outside of the law in doing so.
“The president asserts the extraordinary power to unilaterally impose tariffs of unlimited amount, duration, and scope,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote in the majority opinion released by the court. “In light of the breadth, history, and constitutional context of that asserted authority, he must identify clear congressional authorisation to exercise it.”
“The Government reads IEEPA to give the President power to unilaterally impose unbounded tariffs and change them at will. That view would represent a transformative expansion of the President’s authority over tariff policy,” Roberts added. “It is also telling that in IEEPA’s half century of existence, no President has invoked the statute to impose any tariffs, let alone tariffs of this magnitude and scope.”
Roberts pointed to Article I, Section 8, of the Constitution, which bestows the power to “lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises,” directly in the hands of Congress.
“We claim no special competence in matters of economics or foreign affairs,” Roberts added. “We claim only, as we must, the limited role assigned to us by Article III of the Constitution. Fulfilling that role, we hold that IEEPA does not authorise the president to impose tariffs.”
Conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch, whom Trump appointed during his first term, agreed that Congress needed to authorise Trump’s tariffs. “Most major decisions affecting the rights and responsibilities of the American people (including the duty to pay taxes and tariffs) are funneled through the legislative process for a reason,” he wrote in his concurring opinion. “The deliberative nature of the legislative process was the whole point of its design. Through that process, the Nation can tap the combined wisdom of the people’s elected representatives, not just that of one faction or man. There, deliberation tempers impulse, and compromise hammers disagreements into workable solutions.”
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Trump was reportedly told of the decision while meeting with governors at the White House, and called it a “disgrace.”
Trump announced a sweeping tariff package at a White House event last April, imposing a series of steep import taxes on nations around the world. The president has continued to use tariffs or the threat of tariffs to bully other nations into complying with his demands. Economists have widely bashed Trump’s tariff policy, which effectively amounts to a tax on American consumers. “This is a win for the wallets of every American consumer,” Senate Minority Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said in response to the ruling.
Trump has continued to defend the tariffs, however, and seemed confident on Thursday that the Supreme Court would rule in his favor. “Without tariffs, what would you do? You know what? Everybody would be bankrupt, the whole country would be bankrupt,” he said at an event in Georgia. “I’ve been waiting [for this decision] forever. The language is clear that I have the right to do it as president.”
The Supreme Court disagrees.
From Rolling Stone US
