SCOTUS Knocks Down Trump’s ‘Emergency’ Tariffs in 6-3 Decision

The Supreme Court blocked President Donald Trump’s signature economic and foreign policy Friday morning in a fractured 6-3 decision.

Trump cannot use the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA, to override Congress’s power of the purse, using the emergency declaration to levy widespread global tariffs, the majority held. The decision will now likely require an end to those tariffs, and could trigger the return of tariff revenue collected by Customs and Border Protection and deposited into the U.S. Treasury.

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion, which was joined in part by Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett and Ketanji Brown Jackson. Kagan filed a concurring opinion, joined by Sotomayor and Jackson, while Jackson filed her own concurring opinion.  Gorsuch and Barrett also filed concurring opinions.

Justices Clarence Thomas, Brett Kavanaugh and Samuel Alito dissented, with Thomas filing one dissenting opinion and Kavanaugh filing another, joined by Thomas and Alito.

“Based on two words separated by 16 others in [a section of] of IEEPA — ‘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,” Roberts wrote. “Those words cannot bear such weight.”

The majority opinion ultimately agrees with the main argument of the plaintiffs, a slate of small businesses suing the government on the grounds that Trump’s IEEPA tariffs are illegal. Tariffs are a tax, the plaintiffs had argued, and taxing authority rests solely with Congress.

Quoting Alexander Hamilton, the majority noted that the nation’s founding was inspired in large part by “taxation without representation.” Congress would not have delegated its taxation power to the executive branch using ambiguous language like “regulate,” Roberts wrote.

The Court also referenced its own decision in the 2023 student loan forgiveness case, in which the Court used the major questions doctrine to rule former President Joe Biden did not have the authority to cancel more than $400 billion in student loan debt. The major questions doctrine holds that in the event a president issues a policy dealing with what the court labels as an issue of “vast economic and political significance,” the statute used must explicitly grant the executive those powers. Scholars had referenced that case when considering how the Supreme Court might rule on this one, recalling that the Court blocked Biden’s executive authority to cancel student loans, but weighing the conservative Court’s tendency to contort itself to Trump’s will.

Roberts’ majority opinion lingered on the government’s opinion that specific words in IEEPA, “regulate” and “importation,” granted the president tariff powers.

“It does not,” the opinion said.  

Trump used the declaration of national emergencies about drug trafficking and historic trade deficits to justify levying tariffs under IEEPA, a claim the Court rejected in its ruling. That a president could simply declare an emergency and enact “a dizzying array of modifications at will,” which had enormous effects over the entire economy, is not a provision provided by IEEPA, the Court wrote. It also referenced Trump’s own claims about the staggering economic impacts of the tariffs to highlight the significance of Trump’s sweeping tariffs, which, the majority said, goes beyond authority delegated by IEEPA.

Before Friday’s decision, scholars had considered the Court’s skittishness to address economic and foreign policy issues. Roberts’ majority opinion addressed that, as well.

“We claim no special competence in matters of economics or foreign affairs,” the chief justice wrote. “We claim only, as we must, the limited role assigned to us by Article III of the Constitution.” 

This is a breaking news story and will be updated. Read the decision below: