Washington (Somalia Today) – The US Supreme Court on Friday struck down President Donald Trump’s sweeping global tariffs, delivering a major repudiation of a core pillar of his economic agenda.
In a rare ideological split, the court ruled 6-3 to rein in the Republican president’s expansive use of executive power.
Conservative Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch joined the court’s three liberal members in the majority.
The ruling wipes out the baseline 10 percent tariff Trump imposed unilaterally on nearly every country in the world in April 2025, a move he dubbed “Liberation Day.”
It also invalidates specific, higher reciprocal tariffs levied against top US trading partners, including Canada, Mexico, China, the European Union, Japan, and South Korea.
“The President asserts the extraordinary power to unilaterally impose tariffs of unlimited amount, duration, and scope,” Roberts wrote for the majority.
“In light of the breadth, history, and constitutional context of that asserted authority, he must identify clear congressional authorization to exercise it,” the chief justice added.
The majority found that the 1977 emergency powers law Trump cited to justify the import duties falls short of the congressional approval needed to bypass the Constitution, which vests the power of taxation solely in Congress.
Trump reaction
President Donald Trump admonished justices who struck down sweeping tariffs on Friday, accusing the six members of the Supreme Court of being “afraid of doing the right thing.”
The president said at a press conference hours after the court’s ruling that he’s “ashamed” for the justices who voted against his tariffs, singling out the liberal justices who joined three conservatives in blocking the tariffs as a “disgrace to our nation.”
“The Supreme Court’s ruling on tariffs is deeply disappointing, and I’m ashamed of certain members of the court, absolutely ashamed, for not having the courage to do what’s right for our country,” he said.
Trump promised to use “other alternatives” to reinstate his tariffs, and floated potentially implementing trade embargoes on other nations.
Geopolitical weapon
The win for the 12 Democratic-run states and small businesses that challenged the tariffs may prove short-lived.
The White House has signaled it will try to use other executive authorities to keep similar duties in place.
“We’ve been thinking about this plan for five years or longer,” US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer told Politico in December.
“My message is tariffs are going to be a part of the policy landscape going forward,” Greer said.
Trump has repeatedly argued that a loss at the Supreme Court would be a disaster for the United States, undercutting his ability to use import taxes to address geopolitical conflicts.
The administration has leaned heavily on tariff threats to gain negotiating leverage, floating duties against countries doing business with Iran and even threatening tariffs during an aborted attempt to acquire Greenland.
During a visit to Georgia on Wednesday, Trump touted a steel business he said had boosted production because of his restrictive import taxes.
“The tariff is the greatest thing that this country has ever experienced,” Trump said. “We’re making a fortune. But more importantly, all these factories are booming now, and they were all dead.”
Major questions
While Roberts’ ruling was emphatic, the court’s majority did not fully unite around its rationale.
All six justices in the majority agreed that the law Trump cited, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), could not properly be read to authorize tariffs.
However, Roberts, Gorsuch, and Barrett went further, invoking a legal theory known as the “major questions doctrine.”
The doctrine holds that because tariffs carry vast economic and political impact, Congress would need to speak with particular clarity before delegating its trade-related powers to the executive branch.
The three conservative justices pointed to the same principle the court used to doom then-President Joe Biden’s $500 billion student loan forgiveness program in 2023.
The court’s three liberal justices — Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson — agreed Trump lacked authority but refused to apply the major questions doctrine, relying instead on standard statutory interpretation.
The chief justice, Gorsuch and Barrett also rejected arguments from Trump and the dissenting justices that the court should defer to the president because of the role tariffs play in foreign relations.
“Whatever may be said of other powers that implicate foreign affairs, we would not expect Congress to relinquish its tariff power through vague language, or without careful limits,” Roberts wrote.
Historic precedent
The Trump administration argued that IEEPA, a 1977 law allowing the president to regulate importation during national emergencies, inherently allows him to set import duties.
Congress enacted IEEPA specifically to restrict presidential emergency powers following decades of executive overreach under the older 1917 Trading with the Enemy Act.
Under that older 1917 law, President Richard Nixon successfully imposed a temporary 10 percent import surcharge in 1971 to address a currency crisis.
However, since the IEEPA was passed in 1977, presidents have invoked it dozens of times, almost exclusively to impose targeted sanctions, freeze assets, or block transactions with hostile foreign actors like terrorists or rogue states.
Trump became the first president to invoke the modern law as a mechanism for broad, global 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.
Billion-dollar mess
The federal government could now have to issue billions of dollars in refunds to companies that paid the taxes.
The U.S. Treasury had collected more than $133 billion from the IEEPA-authorized import taxes as of December, federal data shows, with the decade-long impact originally estimated at some $3 trillion.
Many companies, including the big-box warehouse chain Costco, have already sued to protect their refund claims.
While the majority opinion made no mention of the looming refund fight, Justice Brett Kavanaugh predicted chaos in his dissent.
“The United States may be required to refund billions of dollars to importers who paid the IEEPA tariffs, even though some importers may have already passed on costs to consumers or others,” Kavanaugh wrote.
“The refund process is likely to be a ‘mess,'” he added.
Kavanaugh, writing for the three dissenting conservative justices, argued that context and common sense supported the conclusion that IEEPA clearly authorized the president’s actions.
For small businesses burdened by the baseline 10 percent tariff, the ruling brought immediate, joyful relief.
Ann Robinson, who owns Scottish Gourmet in Greensboro, said the taxes cost her business roughly $30,000 in the fall season.
She said she was “doing a happy dance” when she heard the news.
“Time to schedule my ‘Say Goodbye to Tariffs’ Sale!” Robinson said.
