Supreme Court rules against Trump and strikes down tariffs in stinging political setback

The Supreme Court handed President Donald Trump a stinging defeat Friday, ruling that he overstepped his authority by invoking a 1970s emergency law to impose sweeping tariffs on imports from nearly every U.S. trading partner.

The 6-3 decision strikes at the heart of the president’s second-term economic agenda and clips the wings of a despotic leader who has cultivated a strongman image built on unchecked executive power.

The decision is likely to have a broad impact, influencing global trade, consumers, businesses, inflation, and the wallets of every American.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., writing for the majority, delivered a plain-spoken rebuke that carried the weight of a constitutional primer.

The International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977, he observed, contains no reference to tariffs or duties. No president in its nearly 50-year history had ever read it to confer such power. Until now.

“We claim no special competence in matters of economics or foreign affairs,” Roberts wrote. “We claim only, as we must, the limited role assigned to us by Article III of the Constitution. Fulfilling that role, we hold that IEEPA does not authorize the president to impose tariffs.”

The ruling invalidates what the administration had called its most significant economic initiative of Trump’s second term—a global web of levies that began with fentanyl-related emergency declarations against China, Canada and Mexico in February 2025 and expanded to so-called reciprocal tariffs on dozens of nations by April. The Congressional Budget Office had projected the duties would generate roughly $300 billion annually over the next decade.

Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr., and Brett M. Kavanaugh dissented. Kavanaugh argued that tariffs are a traditional tool to regulate importation and that the court was effectively second-guessing policy choices best left to the political branches.

But the majority saw it differently. The word “regulate” in IEEPA, Roberts explained, does not authorize taxation. Congress, when it intends to delegate tariff authority, does so explicitly. The statute at issue does not.

Trump appointed three of the nine Supreme Court justices, but only one of his nominees supported his unprecedented power grab.

The decision represents the first time the Supreme Court has issued a final opinion on the underlying legality of one of Trump’s signature policies, and it comes with unusual timing—four days before the president’s State of the Union address and as he simultaneously weighs military action against Iran.

For a president who has regularly emerged victorious before the conservative-majority court in emergency appeals, the loss lands with particular force.

For the American economy, the ruling sends a jolt through a system already adjusting to Trump’s trade disruption.

Since February 2025, importers have paid billions in now-invalidated duties—an estimated $130 billion by mid-December under the IEEPA tariffs alone, according to Customs and Border Protection data.

Companies from Costco to Revlon had already filed lawsuits seeking refunds. The Supreme Court offered no guidance on how those refunds will work, leaving that battle for the lower courts.

The practical effect on consumers may prove muted in the short term.

In 2025, the U.S. economy grew by an estimated 2.2% year-on-year, driven by consumer spending and business investment despite a late-year slowdown. Concurrently, China’s economy expanded by 5.0%, meeting its official target through robust exports and policy stimulus, according to International Monetary Fund (IMF) data and official reports.

The nonpartisan Tax Foundation had projected that tariffs would cost the average U.S. household $1,300 in 2026. But much of that burden stemmed from duties imposed under other legal authorities—steel, aluminum, copper—that remain in place.

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York estimated last year that nearly 90% of the tariffs’ cost fell on U.S. companies and consumers, not foreign producers, as Trump had claimed.

What the decision does not do is end Trump’s trade war. The president retains other statutory avenues—including Section 232 national security tariffs and Section 301 retaliation authority—to pursue his protectionist vision.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and other officials have signaled they will invoke alternative justifications to retain as many duties as possible.

Congress holds constitutional authority to impose tariffs, though that body has shown little appetite for exercising it.

But the ruling strips Trump of his most flexible weapon: the ability to declare an emergency and instantly levy duties on any nation’s goods, bringing leaders scrambling to Washington for deals. That leverage, wielded with theatrical flair over the past year, is now gone.

The economic results of Trump’s experiment, meanwhile, have proved elusive. Despite the tariffs, the U.S. goods trade deficit hit a record $1.241 trillion last year—a 2.1% increase from 2024.

Imports from China plummeted to their lowest level since 2009, but Vietnamese, Indian, and Taiwanese goods more than filled the gap as trade deficits set a new record high.

Manufacturing employment, far from booming, shed roughly 83,000 jobs over the past year.

For a president who has built his political identity around strength—who warned that ruling against him would bring economic ruin and national embarrassment—the decision lands as something more than a legal setback.

It is a public clipping of wings, administered by a court that includes three of his own appointees. The justices who granted Trump repeated emergency victories throughout 2025 chose this moment to draw a line.

Whether that line holds may depend on what Trump does next.

He could seek legislation. He could test other statutory authorities. He could, as he has suggested, develop a “game two” plan.

But the plain truth of Friday’s ruling is this: The emperor’s new tariffs, it turns out, were never his to impose at all.