Supreme Court blocks Trump tariffs in major test of executive branch powers
The Supreme Court on Friday blocked President Donald Trump’s use of an emergency law to unilaterally impose sweeping tariffs on most U.S. trading partners, delivering a blow to the president...
By Fox News · Fox News
The Supreme Court on Friday blocked President Donald Trump’ s use of an emergency law to unilaterally impose sweeping tariffs on most U.S. trading partners, delivering a blow to the president in a case centered on one of his signature economic policies — one he characterized as "life or death" for the U.S. economy. In a 6-3 decision , the justices invalidated Trump's tariffs. Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Brett Kavanaugh dissented. "The Framers gave that power to ‘Congress alone’—notwithstanding the obvious foreign affairs implications of tariffs," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority. "And 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 noted that Trump used "two words" that were "separated by 16 others" in the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), "regulate" and "importation," to claim the president had the "independent power to impose tariffs on imports from any country, of any product, at any rate, for any amount of time." "Those words cannot bear such weight," Roberts wrote. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in November in the case, which centered on Trump’s use of the IEEPA to enact his "Liberation Day" tariffs on most countries, including a 10% global tariff and a set of higher, so-called "reciprocal" tariffs on certain nations. BATTLEGROND STATES SHOULDER BURDEN OF TRUMP'S TARIFFS AS MIDTERM MESSAGING RAMPS UP In April, Trump declared the U.S. trade deficit a "national emergency," and lawyers for the administration have cited that declaration as the legal basis for invoking IEEPA, which allows the president to respond to "unusual and extraordinary threats" when a national emergency has been declared. The high court agreed to take up the case last fall after lower courts, including the U.S. Court of International Trade (CIT) and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circ…