144

US Supreme Court rules against Trump’s tariffs in 6-3 opinion, dealing blow to trade agenda (www.newsfromthestates.com)

submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by Beep@lemmus.org to c/news@lemmy.world

12 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Other Sources

The U.S. Supreme Court dealt a major blow to President Donald Trump’s trade agenda Friday, ruling the tariffs he issued under the International Economic Emergency Powers Act are illegal.

In a 6-3 decision authored by Chief Justice John Roberts, the court said Congress alone holds the power to tax in almost all circumstances. The Trump administration’s argument that trade deficits and illegal drug imports granted it emergency power to levy tariffs was not justified, the court said. Tariffs are taxes on imported goods.

The Trump administration had argued that a provision in the law, known as IEEPA, that said the executive branch could “regulate” imports empowered the president to levy tariffs.

“Based on two words separated by 16 others (in the law)—‘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.”

Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett and Ketanji Brown Jackson joined Roberts’ opinion.

Justices Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh filed dissenting opinions. Thomas and Justice Samuel Alito joined Kavanaugh’s.

Kavanaugh’s dissent accepted the administration’s reading of the law and said it was not the justices’ role to decide a policy matter that has “generated vigorous” debate.

“The sole legal question here is whether, under IEEPA, tariffs are a means to ‘regulate . . . importation,’” he wrote. “Statutory text, history, and precedent demonstrate that the answer is clearly yes: Like quotas and embargoes, tariffs are a traditional and common tool to regulate importation.”

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[-] hector@lemmy.today 2 points 1 day ago

It's too bad the president has given tariffs a bad name, it's a labor movement issue to want tariffs on goods from countries that undercut us on labor and the environment. It's created a race to the bottom, exported all of our tech, and built factories for repressive regimes, and has enslaved entire populations, forcing them to work 6-12s for starvation wages, 6 days a week, 12 hours a day. No protections, retirement, health care to speak of usually, no workers comp. Toxins are dumped in the ditch. All to make cheap and sell expensive, to undercut our own gains made by labor, and our gains fighting for a clean environment where we don't (didn't) allow companies to poison us and every living animal in entire aquifers to save a buck on waste disposal, as much.

Those countries should see tariffs to make up for the advantages of undercutting our standards by exploiting their workers under dictatorial systems that brutally repress their exploited workforces. But the president while getting support from the America First crowd that didn't know better than to support him on this, and on his promise of ending foreign wars to benefit the rich and connected, was never going to do this well. He is too mean, too corrupt, and whatever else, to do anything well, and constitutionally against improving the lot of people.

It's a cudgel for him to influence other countries, and a protection racket, he's been trying to turn it into a global protection racket, probably taking under the table pay offs to shell companies in tax shelters to exempt industries and from countries even.

this post was submitted on 20 Feb 2026

144 points (100.0% liked)

News

36018 readers

3561 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil

Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.

2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.

Obvious biased sources will be removed at the mods’ discretion. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted separately but not to the post body. Sources may be checked for reliability using Wikipedia, MBFC, AdFontes, GroundNews, etc.

3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.

Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.

4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source. Clickbait titles may be removed.

Posts which titles don’t match the source may be removed. If the site changed their headline, we may ask you to update the post title. Clickbait titles use hyperbolic language and do not accurately describe the article content. When necessary, post titles may be edited, clearly marked with [brackets], but may never be used to editorialize or comment on the content.

5. Only recent news is allowed.

Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.

6. All posts must be news articles.

No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials, videos, blogs, press releases, or celebrity gossip will be allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis. Mods may use discretion to pre-approve videos or press releases from highly credible sources that provide unique, newsworthy content not available or possible in another format.

7. No duplicate posts.

If an article has already been posted, it will be removed. Different articles reporting on the same subject are permitted. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.

8. Misinformation is prohibited.

Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.

9. No link shorteners or news aggregators.

All posts must link to original article sources. You may include archival links in the post description. News aggregators such as Yahoo, Google, Hacker News, etc. should be avoided in favor of the original source link. Newswire services such as AP, Reuters, or AFP, are frequently republished and may be shared from other credible sources.

10. Don't copy entire article in your post body

For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

JonsJava@lemmy.world

gedaliyah@lemmy.world

little_cow@lemmy.world