US President Donald Trump suffered a major legal and political blow when the Supreme Court invalidated his far‑reaching global tariffs, a cornerstone of his economic agenda, in a 6–3 decision that immediately drew a blistering response from the White House.
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!The ruling, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, concluded that Trump exceeded his authority by using an emergency powers law to impose “reciprocal” tariffs on imports from nearly every country, bypassing Congress on a core taxing power. The decision marked the first time the justices have squarely rejected a central plank of Trump’s trade program, after years in which lower courts had been divided over the legality of his moves.
Trump quickly denounced the Supreme Court’s majority as wrong and insisted that his administration would pivot to other tools to keep pressure on trading partners. “Their ruling is wrong,” he said, adding that the judgment would ultimately be “meaningless” because he had “very powerful alternatives” at his disposal. He vowed to move ahead with a new, 10% global tariff under a different statute that limits such measures to 150 days, positioning it as a stopgap while he searches for a more durable strategy.
But the president reserved his harshest words for some of the conservative justices he nominated. Roberts, along with Justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett, joined the court’s three Democratic appointees to form the majority that struck down the tariffs. In public remarks, Trump praised the three dissenters — Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Brett Kavanaugh — as champions of his trade agenda while accusing the other conservatives of betraying him and the voters who backed his economic program.
“I think it’s an embarrassment to their families, if you want to know the truth,” Trump said of Gorsuch and Barrett, calling them “fools and lapdogs” for Republicans and Democrats who opposed his policies. He said he was not shocked by the votes of the court’s liberal justices, describing them as consistently aligned with their ideological allies, but made clear he felt personally let down by his own nominees.
The lawsuit that led to the ruling was brought by business groups and free‑market legal organizations that argued Trump’s tariffs violated both the Constitution and the 1977 emergency powers statute he invoked. While presidents have relied on that law to freeze assets and impose sanctions in crises ranging from terrorism to cyberattacks, no previous administration claimed it allowed across‑the‑board tariffs on friendly and rival nations alike.
In the majority opinion, Roberts wrote that the Constitution vests the power to impose taxes and duties in Congress and that lawmakers had not clearly transferred that authority to the president in the emergency statute at issue. He rejected arguments from Trump’s legal team that the tariffs should be treated as unreviewable foreign‑policy judgments. “Considerations of foreign affairs do not alter the fundamental allocation of taxing power,” the opinion said in summarizing the court’s reasoning.
Kavanaugh, writing for the three dissenters, countered that the text, history and past practice under the law supported Trump’s authority to impose the tariffs, even if critics saw them as unwise. He warned that striking down the policy could trigger chaotic efforts to claw back billions of dollars already collected from importers and create uncertainty for businesses that had adjusted to the tariffs.
The decision does not immediately resolve whether companies will be able to recover money they paid under Trump’s tariff regime, an issue already being litigated in lower courts by firms including big-box retailer Costco. The majority left those questions for another day, while Kavanaugh acknowledged that any refund process could be complex and contentious.
Trump learned of the ruling during a private White House meeting with nearly two dozen governors from both parties, according to a person familiar with the conversation who spoke on condition of anonymity. He reportedly branded the decision “a disgrace” and later escalated his criticism in a nationally televised appearance, framing the court as an obstacle to his efforts to reshape global trade.
The clash underscores the complicated relationship between Trump and the Supreme Court. He has celebrated the 2024 decision granting presidents’ broad immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts as a personal vindication, even as the justices have occasionally pushed back on his attempts to stretch executive power in areas such as immigration and now trade.
For Trump, the tariff defeat is a stark reminder that even a court he helped refashion with three appointments is not guaranteed to ratify his most ambitious uses of executive authority — and that future battles over the limits of presidential power are likely to be just as unpredictable.