Washington: The United States Supreme Court has ruled Donald Trump’s sweeping global tariffs are illegal, upending the president’s signature economic initiative, opening the door to billions of dollars in refunds and creating a “complete mess”, in Trump’s words.
The 6-3 majority ruling was handed down Friday morning (Washington time) and found Trump exceeded his powers as president. “When Congress has delegated its tariff powers, it has done so in explicit terms and subject to strict limits,” the majority found.
“Against that backdrop of clear and limited delegations, the government reads [the emergency powers laws] to give the president power to unilaterally impose unbounded tariffs and change them at will. That view would represent a transformative expansion of the president’s authority over tariff policy.
“It is also telling that in [that law’s] half century of existence, no president has invoked the statute to impose any tariffs, let alone tariffs of this magnitude and scope.”
Trump asserted in a Truth Social post last month that it would take years to figure out how to repay the tariffs if the court found they were unlawful. He said countries and companies would demand “payback” for investments they were making in the US to avoid his tariffs.
“When these Investments are added, we are talking about Trillions of Dollars! It would be a complete mess, and almost impossible for our Country to pay,” Trump said last month.
“It may not be possible but, if it were, it would be Dollars that would be so large that it would take many years to figure out what number we are talking about and even, who, when, and where, to pay.”
The administration has previously insisted it can rebuild the tariff mosaic using laws other than the one struck down by the Supreme Court.
National Economic Council director Kevin Hassett has said that meetings have been held to discuss alternative legal means to reproduce the president’s international tariff deals, which could begin immediately.
“Our expectation is that we’re going to win, and if we don’t win, then we know that we’ve got other tools that we could use that get us to the same place,” Hassett told CNBC television last month.
More to come
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Michael Koziol is the North America correspondent for The Age and Sydney Morning Herald. He is a former Sydney editor, Sun-Herald deputy editor and a federal political reporter in Canberra.Connect via X or email.
