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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

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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.”

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[-] tal@lemmy.today 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

If these other avenues for enforcing tariffs are better why not just start there?

So, I haven't read deeply into what other routes would be used, just read that they exist. Thus, I'm not the best source for this, and I'm sure that there are people who are and will have more-informed commentary who will be getting interviewed on the news a lot in the aftermath of this. However, if I had to take a guess, my understanding is that Congress has extended the President the authority to block trade with a country entirely, and that that's on firmer ground. Trump might be able to say "I'm now entirely blocking trade, but if you agree to functionally accept tariffs, I'll unblock you" or something like that. From the Trump administration's standpoint, that's more hassle and difficulty, but he might avoid the ruling here.

But don't take that as authoritative, please

as I said, I haven't spent time on it, and a lot of people who are better-equipped to answer will be answering the same question on the news and such. I just want to raise the prospect that we may still be looking at tariffs, to make people aware of it, before everyone starts throwing a party and saying that everything will be as it was pre-Trump.

this post was submitted on 20 Feb 2026

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