Court mulls tariffs’ legality in test of Trump’s power
The US Supreme Court will hear arguments over the legality of Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs in a case with implications for the global economy that marks a major test of the Republican president’s powers and the justices’ willingness to allow him to push the boundaries of his authority.
Arguments are set to begin Wednesday after lower courts ruled that Trump’s unprecedented use of federal law, which he used in 1977 to impose tariffs during national emergencies, exceeded his authority.
The challenge involves three lawsuits filed by businesses affected by the tariffs and 12 U.S. states, mostly led by Democrats.
Trump pressured the Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, to protect tariffs, which he uses as a key economic and foreign policy tool.
Tariffs on imported goods could reach trillions of dollars for the United States over the next decade.
If the judges struck them, “we would be left defenseless, perhaps even leading to the ruin of our nation,” Trump wrote in a social media post Sunday.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who has emphasized the importance of the case to the administration, plans to attend Wednesday’s discussions in person.
If the Supreme Court rules against Trump, those tariffs are expected to continue as the administration turns to other legal authorities, Bessent told Reuters.
The justices will consider Trump’s actions to impose tariffs on nearly every U.S. trading partner based on the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.
The law allows the president to regulate commerce during national emergencies but does not specifically mention the word tariffs.
Trump is the first president to use the law in this way; Since returning to office, his crackdown on immigration is one of many ways he has aggressively pushed the limits of executive authority in areas as diverse as firings of federal agency officials and domestic military deployments.
The U.S. Constitution gives Congress, not the president, the authority to set taxes and tariffs.
Trump’s Justice Department argued that IEEPA authorized the tariffs by giving the president the authority to “regulate” emergency imports.
IEEPA-based tariffs generated US$89 billion ($A137 billion) in estimated collections between February 4 and September 23, when the latest data was published by US Customs and Border Protection.
The Supreme Court backed Trump in a series of emergency decisions this year.
They temporarily moved forward with Trump’s policies that have been blocked by lower courts over questions about their legality, leading critics to warn that the justices are refusing to act to check the president’s power.
The tariff case marked the first time the court heard arguments on the legal merits of one of Trump’s 2025 policies.
When Trump returned to the presidency in January, he incited a global trade war, alienating trading partners, increasing volatility in financial markets and fueling global economic uncertainty.
He imposed tariffs on goods imported from individual countries in February to address what he called a national emergency over U.S. trade deficits, and used China, Canada and Mexico as economic leverage to curb the smuggling of fentanyl and illicit drugs into the U.S. in February.
Trump has used tariffs to extract concessions, renegotiate trade agreements and punish countries that draw his ire on non-trade political issues.
These range from Brazil’s investigation of former president Jair Bolsonaro to India’s purchase of Russian oil to help finance Russia’s war in Ukraine to the Canadian province of Ontario’s anti-tariff ad.
