Supreme Court Strikes Down Swath Of Trump's Tariffs

• The Supreme Court blocked President Donald Trump's ability to impose tariffs through IEEPA.
• The 6-3 opinion said the law didn't grant him those sweeping powers.
• While Trump has heavily relied on IEEPA, he can use other laws to impose tarrifs.

The Supreme Court struck down a chunk of President Donald Trump's sweeping tariff policy on Friday, ruling that the White House exceeded its authority.

The 6-3 decision centered on the tariffs Trump justified under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, a national security law that allows the president to regulate economic activity during emergencies.

Those IEEPA-justified tariffs have been one of Trump's most powerful weapons in his efforts to renegotiate trade agreements around the globe. They include Trump's so-called "Liberation Day" tariffs, announced in April, which are at least 10% on nearly every country in the world.

In the majority opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that the Trump administration's use of the law to impose taxes on imports, which is normally the purview of Congress, went too far. Trump would need a distinct law from Congress "to justify his extraordinary assertion of the power to impose tariffs," he wrote.

"What common sense suggests, congressional practice confirms," he wrote. "When Congress has delegated its tariff powers, it has done so in explicit terms, and subject to strict limits."

The majority decision was joined by four separate concurring opinions, by Justices Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barnett, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson. They all supplied different arguments on how important it was for the Supreme Court to consult legislative history and invoke the "major questions doctrine" — the idea that presidents need clear Congressional authorization for decisions of significant political and economic importance.

The Supreme Court's decision comes as the United States trade deficit ticked down over the last year, largely due to the Trump administration's tariffs, which are taxes on imported goods. It shrank to $29.4 billion in October, the lowest figure since 2009, before ticking back up in the last two months of the year, Commerce Department data published Thursday showed.

Two groups of businesses filed lawsuits challenging Trump's authority to impose tariffs through IEEPA. The Supreme Court combined the cases and put them on the fast track, holding oral arguments at the beginning of its November term.

IEEPA, a Carter-era law, gives presidents the power to "regulate" importation in times of emergency. The Trump administration claimed that it included the ability to impose tariffs — a position no other president has taken.

Lawyers representing the businesses argued that Congress would have been clear if IEEPA were meant to confer taxation and tariff powers to the president.

During oral arguments, most justices expressed skepticism about the Trump administration's arguments. Justice Neil Gorsuch, whom Trump appointed to the bench in his first term, said taxes were "part of the spark of the American Revolution" and should get careful treatment.

"The power to reach into the pockets of the American people is just different," Gorsuch said. "And it's been different since the founding."

Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito dissented from the majority. In his opinion, Kavanaugh said the language of IEEPA ought to support tariffs.

"Interpreting IEEPA to exclude tariffs creates nonsensical textual and practical anomalies," he wrote. "The plaintiffs and the Court do not dispute that the President can act in declared emergencies under IEEPA to impose quotas or even total embargoes on all imports from a given country. But the President supposedly cannot take the far more modest step of conditioning those imports on payment of a tariff or duty."

The Supreme Court's ruling does not affect the tariffs that Trump has imposed using other laws, and Trump still has the power to issue additional tariffs using those laws, as Kavanaugh noted in his opinion.

But his administration has favored IEEPA because of its perceived flexibility. The other laws that allow presidents to impose tariffs without explicit Congressional approval have limits — including built-in expiration dates and caps on the amount taxed. They also make it more difficult to target particular countries, rather than certain industries.