Supreme Court strikes down Trump’s sweeping tariffs, sparking fierce pushback and vow of new levies

The Supreme Court struck down Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s far-reach­ing glob­al tar­iffs on Fri­day, hand­ing him a sting­ing loss that sparked a fu­ri­ous at­tack on the court he helped shape.

Trump said he was “ab­solute­ly ashamed” of some jus­tices who ruled 6-3 against him, call­ing them “dis­loy­al to our Con­sti­tu­tion” and “lap­dogs.” At one point he even raised the spec­tre of for­eign in­flu­ence with­out cit­ing any ev­i­dence.

The de­ci­sion could have rip­ple ef­fects on economies around the globe af­ter Trump’s moves to re­make post-World War II trad­ing al­liances by wield­ing tar­iffs as a weapon.

But an un­bowed Trump pledged to im­pose a new glob­al 10% tar­iff un­der a law that’s re­strict­ed to 150 days and has nev­er been used to ap­ply tar­iffs be­fore.

“Their de­ci­sion is in­cor­rect,” he said. “But it doesn’t mat­ter be­cause we have very pow­er­ful al­ter­na­tives.”

The court’s rul­ing found tar­iffs that Trump im­posed un­der an emer­gency pow­ers law were un­con­sti­tu­tion­al, in­clud­ing the sweep­ing “rec­i­p­ro­cal” tar­iffs he levied on near­ly every oth­er coun­try.

Trump ap­point­ed three of the jus­tices on the na­tion’s high­est court dur­ing his first term, and has scored a se­ries of short-term wins that have al­lowed him to move ahead with key poli­cies.

Tar­iffs, though, were the first ma­jor piece of Trump’s broad agen­da to come square­ly be­fore the Supreme Court for a fi­nal rul­ing, af­ter low­er courts had al­so sided against the pres­i­dent.

The ma­jor­i­ty found that it is un­con­sti­tu­tion­al for the pres­i­dent to uni­lat­er­al­ly set and change tar­iffs be­cause tax­a­tion pow­er clear­ly be­longs to Con­gress. “The Framers did not vest any part of the tax­ing pow­er in the Ex­ec­u­tive Branch,” Chief Jus­tice John Roberts wrote.

Jus­tices Brett Ka­vanaugh, Samuel Al­i­to and Clarence Thomas 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. Trump praised his 63-page dis­sent as “ge­nius.”

The court ma­jor­i­ty did not ad­dress whether busi­ness­es 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 in low­er courts to de­mand re­funds. 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 has been es­ti­mat­ed at some $3 tril­lion.

The tar­iffs de­ci­sion doesn’t stop Trump from im­pos­ing du­ties un­der oth­er laws. Those have more lim­i­ta­tions on the speed and sever­i­ty of Trump’s ac­tions, but the pres­i­dent said they would still al­low him to “charge much more” than he had be­fore.

Vice Pres­i­dent JD Vance called the high court de­ci­sion “law­less­ness” in a post on X.

Ques­tions about what Trump can do next

Still, the rul­ing is a “com­plete and to­tal vic­to­ry” for the chal­lengers, said Neal Katyal, who ar­gued the case on be­half of a group of small busi­ness­es.

“It’s a reaf­fir­ma­tion of our deep­est con­sti­tu­tion­al val­ues and the idea that Con­gress, not any one man, con­trols the pow­er to tax the Amer­i­can peo­ple,” he said.

It wasn’t im­me­di­ate­ly clear how the de­ci­sion re­strict­ing Trump’s pow­er to uni­lat­er­al­ly set and change tar­iffs might af­fect trade deals with oth­er coun­tries.

“We re­main in close con­tact with the U.S. Ad­min­is­tra­tion as we seek clar­i­ty on the steps they in­tend to take in re­sponse to this rul­ing,” Eu­ro­pean Com­mis­sion spokesman Olof Gill said, adding that the body would keep push­ing for low­er tar­iffs.

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 had long 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.

While the Con­sti­tu­tion gives Con­gress the pow­er to levy tar­iffs, the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion ar­gued that a 1977 law al­low­ing the pres­i­dent to reg­u­late im­por­ta­tion dur­ing emer­gen­cies al­so al­lows him to set im­port du­ties. 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 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 that doomed then-Pres­i­dent Joe Biden’s $500 bil­lion stu­dent loan for­give­ness pro­gram.

Jus­tices re­ject use of emer­gency pow­ers for tar­iffs

The three con­ser­v­a­tive jus­tices in the ma­jor­i­ty point­ed to that prin­ci­ple, which is called the ma­jor ques­tions doc­trine. It holds that Con­gress must clear­ly au­tho­rize ac­tions of ma­jor eco­nom­ic and po­lit­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance.

“There is no ex­cep­tion to the ma­jor ques­tions doc­trine for emer­gency statutes,” Roberts wrote. The three lib­er­al jus­tices formed the rest of the ma­jor­i­ty, but didn’t join that part of the opin­ion.

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.

Small busi­ness­es cel­e­brat­ed the rul­ing, with the Na­tion­al Re­tail Fed­er­a­tion say­ing it pro­vides “much need­ed cer­tain­ty.”

Illi­nois toy com­pa­ny Learn­ing Re­sources was among the busi­ness­es chal­leng­ing the tar­iffs in court. CEO Rick Wold­en­berg said he ex­pect­ed Trump’s threat of new tar­iffs, but hoped there might be more con­straint in the fu­ture, both le­gal and po­lit­i­cal. “Some­body’s got to pay this bill. Those peo­ple that pay the bill are vot­ers,” he said.

Ann Robin­son, who owns Scot­tish Gourmet in Greens­boro, North Car­oli­na, said she was “do­ing a hap­py dance” when she heard the news.

The 10% base­line tar­iff on U.K. goods put pres­sure on Robin­son’s busi­ness, cost­ing about $30,000 in the fall sea­son. She’s un­sure about the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion’s next steps, but said she’s over­joyed for now. “Time to sched­ule my ‘Say Good­bye to Tar­iffs’ Sale!” —WASH­ING­TON (AP)

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Sto­ry by LIND­SAY WHITE­HURST | As­so­ci­at­ed Press

As­so­ci­at­ed Press writ­ers Mae An­der­son and Steve Peo­ples in New York, Mark Sher­man in Wash­ing­ton and David McHugh in Frank­furt con­tributed to this re­port.