‘Disappointing’: Trump Disses Supreme Court’s Tariff Ruling to the Justices’ Faces

President Donald Trump addressed the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down the tariffs he had imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act in front of four justices at the State of the Union address on Tuesday, including three who voted in the majority.

The president has been on the warpath ever since the court released its opinion last Friday, even going so far as to suggest that the Court had been corrupted by foreign influence and excoriate the Republican-appointed justices who voted to do away with them “fools and lapdogs.”

On Tuesday, the president indicated he intends to circumvent the decision by again unilaterally imposing the same tariffs that were just struck down, saying:

I used these tariffs, took in hundreds of billions of dollars to make great deals for our country, both economically and on a national security basis. Everything was working well. Countries that were ripping us off for decades are now paying us hundreds of billions of dollars. They were ripping so badly, you all know that. Everybody knows it. Even the Democrats know it, they just don’t want to say it. And yet these countries are now happy, and so are we. We made deals, the deals are all done. And they’re happy. They’re not making money like they used to, but we’re making a lot of money. There was no inflation, tremendous growth. And the big story was how Donald Trump called the economy correctly, and 22 Nobel Prize winners in economics didn’t. They got it totally wrong. They got it really wrong.

And then just four days ago, an unfortunate ruling from the United States Supreme Court. It just came down. It came down — very unfortunate ruling. But the good news is that almost all countries and corporations want to keep the deal that they already made. Right, Scott? Knowing that the legal power that I, as president, have to make a new deal could be far worse for them, and therefore they will continue to work along the same successful path that we had negotiated before the Supreme Court’s unfortunate involvement.

So, despite the disappointing ruling, these powerful, country-saving — it’s saving our country, the kind of money we’re taking in, peace-protecting, many of the wars I’ve settled was because of the threat of tariffs, I wouldn’t have been able to settle them without — will remain in place under fully approved and tested alternative legal statutes, and they have been tested for a long time. They’re a little more complex, but they’re actually probably better. Leading to a solution that will be even stronger than before. Congressional action will not be necessary. It’s already time-tested and approved. And as time goes by, I believe the tariffs paid for by foreign countries will, like in the past, substantially replace the modern-day system of income tax, taking a great financial burden off the people that I love.

Watch above via CNN.

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