Legality of Trump's tariffs on docket
Supreme Court's decision likely to have significant consequences either way
By: Maureen Groppe
USA Today
WASHINGTON - As President Donald Trump see it, the Supreme Court faces a stark choice on whether to uphold the sweeping tariffs he's imposed on nearly every product brought into the United States.
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Back the tariffs and the nation will have "unprecedented success."
..... Strike them down and here will be "catastrophic consequences for our national security, foreign policy and the economy," the administration told the justices in its written briefs before oral arguments.
begin November 5. [2025]
..... While Trump's rhetoric may be unusually dramatic for a court filing, there's no question that stakes are huge - for Trump's agenda, the economy, the federal budget, presidential power and for businesses and households that are bearing the brunt of the tariffs.
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"Just about every way up look at it, it's a big deal," said Daniel Walters, an expert on administrative law at Texas A&M University School of Law.
..... Trump has argued that trillions of dollars in new tariffs are needed to reduce persistent trade deficits, which he says have hollowed out the nation's manufacturing base, undermined critical supply chains and allowed other nations to take advantage of the United States.
..... The businesses and states challenging the import fees say that they're doing more harm than good, including raising costs and uncertainty for consumers and businesses. And they argue the president doesn't have the legal authority to take such expansive and consequential action.
..... "This is a breathtaking assertion of power," lawyers for some of the challengers told the high court in a filing.
..... It's not usual for the Supreme Court to decide cases with big effects on the economy.
..... In 1935, the court narrowly upheld a change Congress made to contracts so that repayment couldn't be requested in gold rather than dollars, said legal historian Stuart Banner, author of the book "The Most Powerful Court in the World."
...... Because President Franklin D, Roosevelt had recently devalued the dollar, a decision the other way would have increased most debts by 60%. The Roosevelt administration considered the case so significant that the president planned to disobey the court if the ruling came out differently, Banner said.
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Michael McConnell, a Stanford Law School professor and one of the lawyers representing some of the businesses challenging the tariffs, said the first case he teaches in his constitutional law class is the court's 1952 ruling that President Harry Truman could not seize private steel mills to keep production going during the Korean War.
..... "You can scarcely imagine anything more important than, at a time of war, being able to have armaments," he said. "And the Supreme Court said, 'No, there is no authorization for that.' And this is widely considered top be the Supreme Court's finest hour."
..... Historically, it's also not unprecedented for the court to take cases as central to a president's agenda as the tariffs are to Trump's economic and foreign policy plans.
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Matthew Fitzgerald, a partner at the law firm McGuireWoods who previously clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas, said the case reminds him of the court's rejection of a challenge to President Barack Obama's health care initiative.
..... "And there were justices on the court, even conservative-leaning justices, who were very wary of overturning a president's signature, achievement on any sort of questionable ground at all," Fitzgerald said at a McGuireWoods event previewing the court's term. "i wonder if that same sort of impulse will play in here in Trump's favor."
..... But Alan Morrison, who teaches at George Washington University Law School, noted that - unlike Trump's tar8ffs - the Affordable care Act was explicitly cerated by Congress. The Supreme Court would've been taking on both the legislative and executive branches if it had struck down that measure.
..... "The law that Trump is relying on here is a law that was passed in 1977 and doesn't mention trade at all," Morrison said. "I can't think of anything where a president has claimed this level of power over the economy."
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That 1977 law, called the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, has been previously used to impose economic sanctions and other penalties on foreign countries. But the administration contends the authority the law gives presidents a "regulate" importation in response to an "unusual and extraordinary threat" to national interests includes the power to impose tariffs.
..... The U.S. Chamber of Commerce argues it defies common sense to think congress meant to give presidents such "unprecedented authority to upend the domestic economy through taxation" without directly saying so.
..... In other words, the President urged the court to uphold his tariff decisions because of their vast economic and political significance," the influential business group wrote in a brief opposing the tariffs. "Yet it is precisely that significance which demands an unambiguous authorization from Congress."
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If the court doesn't agree, Trump could sue the same law to impose excise taxes on many other things, including the transportation of goods, wire communications, bank transactions and more, said peter M. Shane, an expert on the separation of powers at New York University.
..... "He could put excises on lots and lots and lots of things,: Shane said.
..... And Walters said a decision in Trump's favor could also indicate how deferential the court will be to presidents in deciding when emergency powers can be triggered.
..... "Of this is expansively interpreted by the Supreme Court, that Trump is allowed to do this, it;s not hard to imagine there would be other emergency statutes that would open up other things beyond economic regulations," he said.
.... If the court rules against Trump, however, the administration might have to refund at least $90 billion in tariff revenues, according to data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
..... "That would cerate a lot of problems for the federal government," said Juscelino Colares, a trade expert at Case Western Reserve University. "This is the biggest trade case ever, by orders of magnitude."
..... In additions to paying back tariffs already collected, the government would not bring in about $2.2 trillion over the next decade that Republicans were counting on to pay for much of the cost of trump's big tax-and-spending policy law, according to the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget,.
..... It's a massive amount of money," said Marc Goldwein, the group's senior policy director.
..... Trump could sue other nonemergency laws to impose new tariffs, but that would take time and may also face challenges.
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Congress could find other ways to raise the revenue, but Goldwein thinks it's more likely lawmakers won't replace it, which would put the United States closer to the precarious situation of the national debt growing fast enough to spark a debt crisis.