SCOTUS rejects ‘emergency’ tariffs imposed by Trump

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the limited presidential authority to regulate trade under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act did not authorize President Trump to impose tariffs aimed at addressing the influx of illegal drugs from Canada, Mexico, and China, nor tariffs to reduce “large and persistent” trade deficits with those and other trading partners.

Under §1702(a)(1)(B) of the IEEPA, the president has the authority to “investigate, block during the pendency of an investigation, regulate, direct and compel, nullify, void, prevent or prohibit … importation or exportation.”

The case involved tariffs imposed by the Trump administration in 2025. With the stated goal of addressing drug trafficking, the president imposed a 25 percent duty on most Canadian and Mexican imports and a 10 percent duty on most Chinese imports. To reduce trade deficits, the president imposed 10 percent “reciprocal” tariffs “on all imports from all trading partners” and imposed higher rates on dozens of other nations. The president subsequently issued various increases, reductions and other modifications.

Two groups of small businesses filed separate actions alleging the IEEPA does not authorize the reciprocal or drug trafficking tariffs. In one of those cases, a judge in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia granted the plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction, concluding that IEEPA did not grant the President the power to impose tariffs. In the second case, the en banc Federal Circuit affirmed a summary judgment for the plaintiff businesses granted in the U.S. Court of International Trade. The Federal Circuit held that IEEPA’s grant of authority to “regulate … importation” did not authorize the challenged tariffs.

The U.S. Supreme Court granted petitions for certiorari in both cases and consolidated the actions. A divided court affirmed the decision of the Federal Circuit, holding the IEEPA does not authorize the president to impose tariffs. On the other hand, the court ordered the case that had originated in U.S. District Court to be dismissed for lack of jurisdiction.

Click here to read the full text of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Feb. 20 decision in Learning Resources Inc. v. Trump.

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• “The President asserts the extraordinary power to unilaterally impose tariffs of unlimited amount, duration, and scope. In light of the breadth, history, and constitutional context of that asserted authority, he must identify clear congressional authorization to exercise it.
  “IEEPA’s grant of authority to ‘regulate … importation’ falls short. IEEPA contains no reference to tariffs or duties. The Government points to no statute in which Congress used the word ‘regulate’ to authorize taxation. And until now no President has read IEEPA to confer such power.
  “We claim no special competence in matters of economics or foreign affairs. 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.”
  — Justice Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., opinion of the court (joined in part by Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Neil M. Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett and Ketanji Brown Jackson)

• “The President claims that Congress delegated to him an extraordinary power in the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) — the power to impose tariffs on practically any products he wants, from any countries he chooses, in any amounts he selects. Applying the major questions doctrine, the principal opinion rejects that argument. I join in full. The Constitution lodges the Nation’s lawmaking powers in Congress alone, and the major questions doctrine safeguards that assignment against executive encroachment. Under the doctrine’s terms, the President must identify clear statutory authority for the extraordinary delegated power he claims. And, as the principal opinion explains, that is a standard he cannot meet. Whatever else might be said about Congress’s work in IEEPA, it did not clearly surrender to the President the sweeping tariff power he seeks to wield.”
  — Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, concurring

• “To the extent that JUSTICE GORSUCH attacks the view that ‘common sense’ alone can explain all our major questions decisions, ante, he takes down a straw man. I have never espoused that view. Rather, as I explained in my concurrence in Biden v. Nebraska, 600 U. S. 477, 507 (2023), the major questions doctrine ‘situates text in context’ and is therefore best understood as an ordinary application of textualism. Textualists — like all those who use language to communicate — do not interpret words in a vacuum. Instead, we use context, including ‘[b]ackground legal conventions,’ ‘common sense,’ and ‘constitutional structure,’ to ascertain a text’s ‘most natural meaning.’”
  — Justice Amy Coney Barrett, concurring

• “The Court holds today that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) does not authorize the President to impose tariffs. I agree with that conclusion, as I do with the bulk of the principal opinion’s reasoning. But because I think the ordinary tools of statutory interpretation amply support today’s result, I do not join the part of that opinion invoking the so-called major-questions doctrine.”
  — Justice Elena Kagan, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, concurring in part and concurring in the judgment

• “I agree with the Court’s conclusion that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) does not provide the President with the power to tariff. Three of my colleagues have reached this result via the major questions doctrine — a framing that asks, in essence, whether Congress ‘would likely have intended’ to delegate the authority to tariff to the President through IEEPA.
  “While probing Congress’s intent is the right inquiry, my colleagues speculate needlessly. In my view, the Court can, and should, consult a statute’s legislative history to determine what Congress actually intended the statute to do.”
  — Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, concurring in part and concurring in the judgment

• “I join JUSTICE KAVANAUGH’s principal dissent in full. As he explains, the Court’s decision today cannot be justified as a matter of statutory interpretation. Congress authorized the President to “regulate . . . importation.” 50 U. S. C. §1702(a)(1)(B). Throughout American history, the authority to ‘regulate importation’ has been understood to include the authority to impose duties on imports. The meaning of that phrase was beyond doubt by the time that Congress enacted this statute, shortly after President Nixon’s highly publicized duties on imports were upheld based on identical language. The statute that the President relied on therefore authorized him to impose the duties on imports at issue in these cases. JUSTICE KAVANAUGH makes clear that the Court errs in concluding otherwise.
  “I write separately to explain why the statute at issue here is consistent with the separation of powers as an original matter.”
  — Justice Clarence Thomas, dissenting

•  “Acting pursuant to his statutory authority to ‘regulate … importation’ under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA, the President has imposed tariffs on imports of foreign goods from various countries. The tariffs have generated vigorous policy debates. Those policy debates are not for the Federal Judiciary to resolve. Rather, the Judiciary’s more limited role is to neutrally interpret and apply the law. The sole legal question here is whether, under IEEPA, tariffs are a means to ‘regulate … importation.’ Statutory text, history, and precedent demonstrate that the answer is clearly yes: Like quotas and embargoes, tariffs are a traditional and common tool to regulate importation.”
  — Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr., dissenting