Supreme Court Rules Trump Tariffs Are Illegal

The Supreme Court ruled on Friday morning that President Donald Trump’s sweeping emergency tariffs are illegal.

The ruling from Chief Justice John Roberts included, “The President asserts the extraordinary power to unilaterally impose tariffs of unlimited amount, duration, and scope…he must identify clear congressional authorization to exercise it.” CNN’s Kaitlan Collins reported from inside the White House breakfast with governors that Trump called the decision a “disgrace.”

Fox News anchor Dana Perino broke the news during America’s Newsroom, reporting, “It’s finally here. The Supreme Court has made a decision on President Trump’s tariffs. This is a huge case, a big ruling that comes right before the State of the Union, and Shannon Bream, of course, is standing by with us. Shannon, do we have an initial thought on what the ruling is?”

“We do. We’ve got a very fractured opinion, but initially what it says — we know it’s authored, the primary opinion, by the Chief Justice — says essentially that IEEPA, this law that grants the president emergency powers, did not — it looks like, by this first blush reading by the Chief Justice here — does not give him the power to levy these tariffs that he’s levied,” Bream replied, adding:

Part of this initial opinion says the words “regulate” and “importation” — the president says that gives him the independent power to impose tariffs on imports from any country, any product, any rate, any time. These words, it says, cannot bear such weight. We know we’ve got a dissent by Justice Kavanaugh, by Thomas, and Alito, it looks like, and those were the three we thought during the arguments — if anyone would be persuaded to allow the president to move forward with these tariffs, they would be the ones to do it.

So at first blush, like I said, there are multiple parts and concurrences to this opinion, but it looks like what the primary holding is going to be is that these tariffs cannot be used in the way that the president had tried to use them. Let me get you to the closing paragraph that we have in this initial opinion here. It says: “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” — meaning if he wants to do it, he’s got to show that Congress has allowed him to do it.

But they say IEEPA, this emergency powers law, 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 ever read IEEPA to confer such powers. “We claim no special competence in matters of economics or foreign affairs, but we claim only, as we must, the limited role assigned to us by Article 3 of the Constitution. Fulfilling that role, we hold that IEEPA does not authorize the president to impose tariffs.” We’ll keep reading. That is the first blush, authored by Chief Justice John Roberts.

The 6-3 ruling will also require the federal government to refund the tariff revenue it collected under the emergency tariffs, some $175 billion.

This is a developing story and has been updated.

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