Supreme Court strikes down Trump’s sweeping tariffs, upending central plank of economic agenda

The Supreme Court struck down Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s far-reach­ing glob­al tar­iffs on Fri­day, hand­ing him a sig­nif­i­cant loss on an is­sue cru­cial to his eco­nom­ic agen­da.

The 6-3 de­ci­sion cen­tres on tar­iffs im­posed un­der an emer­gency pow­ers law, in­clud­ing the sweep­ing “rec­i­p­ro­cal” tar­iffs he levied on near­ly every oth­er coun­try.

It’s the first ma­jor piece of Trump’s broad agen­da to come square­ly be­fore the na­tion’s high­est court, which he helped shape with the ap­point­ments of three con­ser­v­a­tive ju­rists in his first term.

The ma­jor­i­ty found that the Con­sti­tu­tion “very clear­ly” gives Con­gress the pow­er to im­pose tax­es, which in­clude tar­iffs. “The Framers did not vest any part of the tax­ing pow­er in the Ex­ec­u­tive Branch,” Chief Jus­tice John Roberts wrote.

Jus­tices Samuel Al­i­to, Clarence Thomas and Brett Ka­vanaugh dis­sent­ed.

“The tar­iffs at is­sue here may or may not be wise pol­i­cy. But as a mat­ter of text, his­to­ry, and prece­dent, they are clear­ly law­ful,” Ka­vanaugh wrote.

The ma­jor­i­ty did not ad­dress whether com­pa­nies could get re­fund­ed for the bil­lions they have col­lec­tive­ly paid in tar­iffs. Many com­pa­nies, in­clud­ing the big-box ware­house chain Cost­co, have al­ready lined up to de­mand re­funds in low­er courts. Ka­vanaugh not­ed the process could be com­pli­cat­ed.

“The Court says noth­ing to­day about whether, and if so how, the Gov­ern­ment should go about re­turn­ing the bil­lions of dol­lars that it has col­lect­ed from im­porters. But that process is like­ly to be a ‘mess,’ as was ac­knowl­edged at oral ar­gu­ment,” he wrote.

The Trea­sury had col­lect­ed more than $133 bil­lion from the im­port tax­es the pres­i­dent has im­posed un­der the emer­gency pow­ers law as of De­cem­ber, fed­er­al da­ta shows. The im­pact over the next decade was es­ti­mat­ed at some $3 tril­lion.

The tar­iffs de­ci­sion doesn’t stop Trump from im­pos­ing du­ties un­der oth­er laws. While those have more lim­i­ta­tions on the speed and sever­i­ty of Trump’s ac­tions, top ad­min­is­tra­tion of­fi­cials have said they ex­pect to keep the tar­iff frame­work in place un­der oth­er au­thor­i­ties.

The Supreme Court rul­ing comes de­spite a se­ries of short-term wins on the court’s emer­gency dock­et that have al­lowed Trump to push ahead with ex­tra­or­di­nary flex­es of ex­ec­u­tive pow­er on is­sues rang­ing from high-pro­file fir­ings to ma­jor fed­er­al fund­ing cuts.

The Re­pub­li­can pres­i­dent has been vo­cal about the case, call­ing it one of the most im­por­tant in U.S. his­to­ry and say­ing a rul­ing against him would be an eco­nom­ic body blow to the coun­try. But le­gal op­po­si­tion crossed the po­lit­i­cal spec­trum, in­clud­ing lib­er­tar­i­an and pro-busi­ness groups that are typ­i­cal­ly aligned with the GOP. Polling has found tar­iffs aren’t broad­ly pop­u­lar with the pub­lic, amid wider vot­er con­cern about af­ford­abil­i­ty.

The Con­sti­tu­tion gives Con­gress the pow­er to levy tar­iffs. But the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion ar­gued that a 1977 law al­low­ing the pres­i­dent to reg­u­late im­por­ta­tion dur­ing emer­gen­cies al­so al­lows him to set tar­iffs. Oth­er pres­i­dents have used the law dozens of times, of­ten to im­pose sanc­tions, but Trump was the first pres­i­dent to in­voke it for im­port tax­es.

“And the fact that no Pres­i­dent has ever found such pow­er in IEEPA is strong ev­i­dence that it does not ex­ist,” Roberts wrote, us­ing an acronym for the law called the In­ter­na­tion­al Emer­gency Eco­nom­ic Pow­ers Act.

Trump set what he called “rec­i­p­ro­cal” tar­iffs on most coun­tries in April 2025 to ad­dress trade deficits that he de­clared a na­tion­al emer­gency. Those came af­ter he im­posed du­ties on Cana­da, Chi­na and Mex­i­co, os­ten­si­bly to ad­dress a drug traf­fick­ing emer­gency.

A se­ries of law­suits fol­lowed, in­clud­ing a case from a dozen large­ly De­mo­c­ra­t­ic-lean­ing states and oth­ers from small busi­ness­es sell­ing every­thing from plumb­ing sup­plies to ed­u­ca­tion­al toys to women’s cy­cling ap­par­el.

The chal­lengers ar­gued the emer­gency pow­ers law doesn’t even men­tion tar­iffs and Trump’s use of it fails sev­er­al le­gal tests, in­clud­ing one called the ma­jor ques­tions doc­trine that doomed then-Pres­i­dent Joe Biden’s $500 bil­lion stu­dent loan for­give­ness pro­gram.

The con­ser­v­a­tive jus­tices in the ma­jor­i­ty point­ed to that prin­ci­ple in their rul­ing. “There is no ex­cep­tion to the ma­jor ques­tions doc­trine for emer­gency statutes,” Roberts wrote.

The Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion had ar­gued that tar­iffs are dif­fer­ent be­cause they’re a ma­jor part of Trump’s ap­proach to for­eign af­fairs, an area where the courts should not be sec­ond-guess­ing the pres­i­dent.

But Roberts, joined by Jus­tices Neil Gor­such and Amy Coney Bar­rett, brushed that aside, writ­ing that the for­eign af­fairs im­pli­ca­tions don’t change the le­gal prin­ci­ple. —WASH­ING­TON (AP)

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Sto­ry by LIND­SAY WHITE­HURST | As­so­ci­at­ed Press

As­so­ci­at­ed Press writer Mark Sher­man con­tributed to this re­port.