In one of its most significant decisions of the year, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down President Donald Trump’s emergency tariffs on Friday.

The tariffs had been one of Mr. Trump’s signature policies, but the court held – in a 6-3 decision that split the court’s six conservative justices – that the president could not use an emergency economic powers law to justify imposing the tariffs.

The decision applies only to what Mr. Trump called his “Liberation Day” tariffs on April 2 last year (though those tariffs applied to over 180 countries). It does not apply to certain other tariffs such as on steel, aluminum and cars. 

Why We Wrote This

The Supreme Court struck down the Trump administration’s use of an emergency economic law to set broad tariffs, reasoning that the 1977 law did not grant the president such sweeping power. President Donald Trump vowed to use other laws to keep tariffs up.

The majority opinion did not address how the government should respond to the sudden termination of tariffs that have been in place for almost a year and collected over $200 billion, according to government officials. The economic and foreign policy fallout is expected to be far-reaching, but for the Supreme Court the tariffs represented an exercise of presidential power that went too far even for a court that has been reluctant to check the White House.

The Trump administration had argued that, because the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) empowers the president to “regulate…importation” during national emergencies, it empowered him to levy the Liberation Day tariffs.

Six members of the high court – including two justices appointed by Mr. Trump – disagreed.

“The President asserts the independent power to impose tariffs on imports from any country, of any product, at any rate, for any amount of time,” wrote Chief Justice John Roberts in the majority opinion. 

The words “regulate” and “importation” – separated by 16 other words in IEEPA, Chief Justice Roberts noted – “cannot bear such weight.”

He was joined by the court’s three liberal justices, Elena Kagan, Ketanji Brown Jackson, and Sonia Sotomayor, as well as two Trump-appointed Justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett.

Mr. Trump described the decision as “deeply disappointing,” and he criticized justices in the majority, implying that corruption had played a role.

“I’m ashamed of certain members of the court…for not having the courage to do what’s right for our country,” he said in comments hours after the decision came down. “It’s my opinion that the court has been swayed by foreign interests.” 

His administration is now planning to impose tariffs using other federal laws, he announced,  including a 10% global tariff based on Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, which permits the president to set temporary tariffs. The justices did not weigh in on whether the government must repay the tariff revenue it has already collected. Mr. Trump said the issue could now face “years” of litigation.

Justices look to Congress 

The decision resolves lawsuits brought by U.S. businesses claiming the tariffs threatened their solvency.

No one disputes that the president has some power to set tariffs, but tariffs of the scope and scale that Mr. Trump asserted on “Liberation Day” are outside constitutional bounds, the majority opinion of the Supreme Court held. The Constitution gives Congress the power of the purse, and while the legislature delegated some emergency powers to the White House with IEEPA, the statute doesn’t mention the word “tariffs” or “duties.”

“It stands to reason that had Congress intended to convey the distinct and extraordinary power to impose tariffs, it would have done so expressly – as it consistently has in other tariff statutes,” wrote Chief Justice Roberts.

In dissent, Justice Brett Kavanaugh – joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito – argued that IEEPA does give the president the power to impose tariffs. “Like quotas and embargoes, tariffs are a traditional and common tool to regulate importation,” he wrote.

At the heart of the high court’s 170-page decision is the major questions doctrine, a directive from the court that the White House can advance a policy addressing a “major question” only if Congress “speaks clearly” that it can do so.

The six conservative justices split over this issue. Chief Justice Roberts, Justice Neil Gorsuch, and Justice Amy Coney Barrett agreed that Congress had not spoken “clearly” enough in IEEPA to authorize the Trump administration’s tariffs. 

Justice Kavanaugh, as well as Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, argued the exact opposite. Furthermore, Justice Kavanaugh wrote in his dissent, the decision represented the first time the court applied the doctrine in the foreign policy context.

Justice Kavanaugh was also the only justice to acknowledge the practical implications of the Supreme Court’s decision.

“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,” he wrote. The decision, he added, “could [also] generate uncertainty regarding various trade agreements.”

Gorsuch reaches out

Chief Justice Roberts, for his part, noted the “limited role” the Supreme Court has in the tariffs dispute – that role being to determine if the Liberation Day tariffs are lawful under IEEPA. The high court, he stressed, “claim[s] no special competence in matters of economics or foreign affairs.”

As the country begins to grapple with the fallout of the court’s ruling, Justice Gorsuch wrote a separate concurrence seeking to bridge divisions both on the court and in the country.

The arguments among the justices over the major questions doctrine “is an interesting turn of events,” he wrote. “Each camp warrants a visit.” 

Across 46 pages he proceeded to analyze and critique all of his colleagues’ arguments. But he concluded with what seems a broader message to Americans, acknowledging their likely disagreements over Mr. Trump’s tariffs campaign.

“For those who think it important for the Nation to impose more tariffs, I understand that today’s decision will be disappointing,” he wrote. “All I can offer them is that most major decisions affecting the rights and responsibilities of the American people…are funneled through the legislative process for a reason.”

“It can be tempting to bypass Congress when some pressing problem arises. But the deliberative nature of the legislative process was the whole point of its design,” he added. “There, deliberation tempers impulse, and compromise hammers disagreements into workable solutions.”

“For some today, the weight of those virtues is apparent. For others, it may not seem so obvious,” he continued. “But if history is any guide, the tables will turn and the day will come when those disappointed by today’s result will appreciate the legislative process for the bulwark of liberty it is.”

Historic consistency

That the high court ruled on a key part of Mr. Trump’s economic policy is not surprising, some historians say.

“The Supreme Court has intervened in economic policy since the beginning of the Republic,” says Richard John, a historian at Columbia University. 

Nor is its ruling against the administration unusual from an historical perspective. “Over the span of the Republic, the trend has certainly been to favor the marketplace over the state,” says Gautham Rao, a legal historian at American University. This decision fits “pretty squarely within that kind of historical trajectory.”

What’s unusual about this case is President Trump’s invocation of a vaguely defined “emergency” to enact sweeping tariffs that affected most of America’s trading partners.

Past presidents have intervened in specific economic conflicts, such as Theodore Roosevelt taking on anthracite coal operators in 1902 and John F. Kennedy forcing steel producers to cancel a price increase. “But using international trade as a sort of a lever in a very public way is distinctive” to President Trump, says Mr. John of Columbia.

The administration has vowed to use other authorities to reconstruct its tariff regime. But those legal options come with restrictions, says Alan Wm. Wolff, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and former deputy director-general of the World Trade Organization. 

Some of the laws the Trump administration could base new tariffs on haven’t been used for 50 years or more. Others require formal government investigations to establish that the tariffs are justified. One of them, Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, which Mr. Trump said he plans to use, allows the president to set temporary tariffs that expire after 150 days unless Congress acts to extend them.