Court Rejects Trump's Tariffs --- The 6-3 decision finds president exceeded powers; Trump orders new global 10% levy

“WASHINGTON -- President Trump's global tariffs are illegal, the Supreme Court ruled Friday, in a stinging repudiation of a signature White House initiative.

 

The 6-3 decision, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, removes a diplomatic tool Trump has wielded to remake U.S. trade deals and collect tens of billions of dollars from companies importing foreign goods.

 

The ruling didn't address if the government will have to pay back the tariff revenue it has collected. The court's silence on the issue created a scramble as companies looked to assert their rights, while Trump warned he had no plans to retreat. On Friday night, he said he signed an order to impose a new global 10% tariff, based on other legal authorities.

 

"We're going forward," Trump said. "We'll be able to take in more money."

 

It is the first time the Supreme Court has definitively struck down one of Trump's second-term policies. In other areas, the court has granted Trump latitude to deploy executive power in novel ways, but a majority of the justices -- three conservatives and three liberals -- said he went too far in enacting his most sweeping tariffs without clear authorization from Congress.

 

The court rejected Trump's argument that a 1977 law, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, implicitly authorized the tariffs.

 

"Had Congress intended to convey the distinct and extraordinary power to impose tariffs, it would have done so expressly," Roberts wrote.

 

Accepting the administration's legal arguments, he wrote, "would replace the longstanding executive-legislative collaboration over trade policy with unchecked presidential policymaking."

 

Three conservative justices -- Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Brett Kavanaugh -- dissented.

 

Kavanaugh said many laws have authorized presidents to impose tariffs and other import restrictions. The 1977 law, he wrote, "merely allows the President to impose tariffs somewhat more efficiently to deal with foreign threats during national emergencies."

 

Trump, in a news conference, called the decision terrible and ridiculous and said he was "ashamed of certain members of the court, absolutely ashamed, for not having the courage to do what's right for our country."

 

"Their decision is incorrect," he said. "But it doesn't matter, because we have very powerful alternatives."

 

The case involved two categories of tariffs. Trump, a Republican, imposed one category on virtually every country in the world, ostensibly to repair trade deficits. He imposed the other set of tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China, saying those countries are responsible for the flow of illegal fentanyl into the U.S.

 

The decision rebuffed an extraordinary public-pressure campaign Trump had mounted against the court while it was weighing the case. The president claimed that a decision against the tariffs would be "the biggest threat in history" to U.S. national security and "would literally destroy the United States of America."

 

The administration does have other laws it can rely on to try to re-enact the tariffs, but those laws have procedural constraints and might not allow tariffs as expansive as those the court struck down.

 

The emergency-economic law invoked by Trump "was designed to address national security concerns and so was designed for flexibility and speed," said Everett Eissenstat, deputy director of the National Economic Council in Trump's first term. "Other statutory authorities are not as flexible."

 

The president could also seek explicit authorization from Congress to reimpose the sweeping tariffs, a route that appears politically unlikely.

 

Other, smaller tariffs that Trump has enacted under different laws remain standing.

 

It wasn't clear whether the administration will have to issue refunds to companies that have been paying tariffs. It could take months to hash that out in lower courts.

 

Kavanaugh, in his dissent, said refunding tariffs already collected could be a "mess" with "significant consequences for the U.S. Treasury."

 

Companies have already filed hundreds of protective lawsuits seeking to preserve their ability to claim refunds from the government for tariffs they have paid, in the event the court struck down the levies.

 

While an ideological cross-section of justices agreed with the bottom-line ruling against the tariffs, they diverged on some of the reasoning.

 

Roberts invoked the "major questions doctrine," a legal principle that says Congress must use exceptionally clear language if it wants to delegate new powers to the executive branch on major political or economic issues. That sort of explicit language doesn't exist in the 1977 statute cited by the Trump administration, Roberts wrote.

 

The statute authorizes the president to respond to "unusual and extraordinary" foreign threats by regulating the importation of goods, but it doesn't contain the words "tariff" or "duty."

 

Justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett, both appointed by Trump during his first term, fully joined the chief justice's opinion.

 

The court's Democratic-appointed justices -- Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson -- said the doctrine was unnecessary to resolve the case. "Ordinary tools of statutory interpretation" make clear Trump's tariffs are illegal, Kagan wrote in a concurring opinion.

 

Kavanaugh, joined by Thomas and Alito, argued in dissent that the text of the 1977 statute did authorize the president to impose tariffs, because tariffs are "a traditional and common tool to regulate importation."

 

The tariffs before the court constituted a majority of Trump's duties. Over the next decade, the tariffs Trump imposed through his claims of emergency powers were expected to raise $1.5 trillion, according to the Tax Foundation, representing 70% of Trump's second-term tariffs.

 

Trump imposed tariffs on Canada, China and Mexico in February 2025 for not doing enough, he claimed, to prevent fentanyl and other illegal drugs from crossing the border into the U.S. Then in April, on a day he dubbed "Liberation Day," Trump announced a general 10% tariff on imports from virtually all countries and steeper levies on those the administration deemed to be bad actors in trade.

 

Until Trump, no president had invoked the emergency-powers law as a basis to impose tariffs. Three different lower courts ruled the tariffs unlawful, including a specialized federal appeals court of national jurisdiction that said the emergency-powers law didn't authorize tariffs of the magnitude Trump imposed.” [1]

 

1. Court Rejects Trump's Tariffs --- The 6-3 decision finds president exceeded powers; Trump orders new global 10% levy. Romoser, James; Bade, Gavin.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 21 Feb 2026: A1.