The justices, in a 6-3 ruling, upheld a lower court’s decision that the Republican president’s use of this 1977 law exceeded his authority. The US Supreme Court on Friday gave a huge blow to President Donald Trump, striking down his sweeping tariffs that the Republican pursued under a law meant for use in national emergencies. Thus, the US top court rejected one of Trump’s most contentious assertions of his authority in a ruling with major implications for the global economy.
The justices, in a 6-3 ruling authored by conservative Chief Justice John Roberts, upheld a lower court’s decision that the Republican president’s use of this 1977 law exceeded his authority. Roberts, citing a prior Supreme Court ruling, wrote that “the president must ‘point to clear congressional authorisation’ to justify his extraordinary assertion of the power to impose tariffs,” adding: “He cannot.”
The three dissenting justices were conservatives Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Brett Kavanaugh. On the other hand, conservative Justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett, both appointed by Trump during his first term, along with the three liberal justices, joined Roberts in the majority. The US Supreme Court ruled that the Donald Trump administration’s interpretation that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) law grants the US President the power he claims to impose tariffs would intrude on Congress’s authority and violate a legal principle called the “major questions” doctrine.
The doctrine, embraced by the conservative justices, requires actions by the government’s executive branch of “vast economic and political significance” to be clearly authorised by Congress. The court used the doctrine to stymie some of Democratic former President Joe Biden’s key executive actions. Roberts, citing a prior Supreme Court ruling, wrote that “the president must ‘point to clear congressional authorisation’ to justify his extraordinary assertion of the power to impose tariffs,” adding: “He cannot.”
The US Supreme Court reached its conclusion in a legal challenge by businesses affected by the tariffs and 12 states, most of them Democratic-governed, against Trump’s unprecedented use of this law to unilaterally impose the import taxes. The US Constitution grants Congress, not the president, the authority to impose taxes and tariffs. But Trump instead turned to statutory authority, invoking IEEPA to impose tariffs on nearly every US trading partner without congressional approval.
Trump has imposed some additional tariffs under other laws that are not at issue in this case. Based on government data from October to mid-December, those represent about a third of the revenue from Trump-imposed tariffs. The IEEPA allows a US President to regulate commerce during a national emergency. Trump became the first president to use IEEPA to impose tariffs, one of the many ways he has aggressively pushed the boundaries of executive authority since he returned to office in areas as varied as his crackdown on immigration, the firing of federal agency officials, domestic military deployments and military operations overseas.
Trump described the tariffs as vital for US economic security, predicting that the country would be defenceless and ruined without them. In November, he told reporters that without his tariffs, “the rest of the world would laugh at us because they’ve used tariffs against us for years and took advantage of us.” Trump said the United States was abused by other countries, including China, the second-largest economy.
