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The United States Supreme Court has struck down US President Donald Trump\u2019s sweeping tariffs that he pursued under a law \u2060meant for use in national emergencies, rejecting one of \u2060his most contentious assertions of his authority in a ruling with crucial implications for the global economy.<\/p>\n
The decision on Friday comes after Trump leveraged tariffs \u2013 taxes on imported goods \u2013 as a key economic and foreign policy tool.<\/p>\n list of 4 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n They have been central to a global trade war that Trump initiated after he began his second term as president, one that has alienated trading partners, affected financial markets and caused \u2060global economic uncertainty.<\/p>\n The justices, in a 6-3 ruling\u00a0authored by conservative Chief Justice John Roberts, upheld a lower court\u2019s decision that the Republican president\u2019s use of this 1977 law exceeded his authority.<\/p>\n Roberts, citing a prior Supreme Court ruling, wrote that \u201cthe president must \u2018point to clear congressional authorization\u2019 to justify his extraordinary assertion of the power to impose tariffs,\u201d adding: \u201cHe cannot.\u201d<\/p>\n The Supreme Court reached its conclusion in a legal challenge by businesses affected by the tariffs and 12 US states, most of them Democratic-governed, against Trump\u2019s unprecedented use of this law to unilaterally impose the import taxes.<\/p>\n It is the first big piece of Trump\u2019s broad agenda to come squarely before the nation\u2019s highest court, which he helped shape with the appointments of three conservative jurists in his first term.<\/p>\n The majority found that the Constitution \u201cvery clearly\u201d gives Congress the power to impose taxes, which include tariffs. \u201cThe Framers did not vest any part of the taxing power in the Executive Branch,\u201d Chief Justice John Roberts wrote.<\/p>\n Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh dissented.<\/p>\n \u201cThe tariffs at issue here may or may not be wise policy. But as a matter of text, history, and precedent, they are clearly lawful,\u201d Kavanaugh wrote in the dissent.<\/p>\n The majority did not address whether companies could get refunded for the billions they have collectively paid in tariffs. Many companies, including the big-box warehouse chain Costco, have already lined up for refunds in court, and Kavanaugh noted the process could be complicated.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Court says nothing today about whether, and if so how, the government should go about returning the billions of dollars that it has collected from importers. But that process is likely to be a \u2018mess,\u2019 as was acknowledged at oral argument,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n Rachel Ziemba, adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, told Al Jazeera that the court ruling was \u201cdefinitely a big repudiation of Trump\u2019s tariff agenda and will force him to rely more on other tools, most of which require more public comment period and Congressional authorisation\u201d.<\/p>\n Friday\u2019s ruling will also, in particular, \u201crein in Trump\u2019s ability to threaten tariffs against any country for any reason\u201d, Ziemba told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s tariffs were forecast to generate, over the next decade, trillions of dollars in revenue for the US, which possesses the world\u2019s largest economy.<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s administration has not provided tariff collection data since December 14. But Penn Wharton Budget Model economists estimated on Friday that the amount collected in Trump\u2019s tariffs based on the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) stood at more than $175bn. That amount likely would need to be refunded with a Supreme Court ruling against the IEEPA-based tariffs.<\/p>\n The US Constitution grants Congress, not the president, the authority to impose taxes and tariffs. But Trump instead turned to a statutory authority by invoking IEEPA to impose the tariffs on nearly every US trading partner without the approval of Congress, the first president to use that.<\/p>\n Trump has imposed some additional tariffs under other laws that are not at issue in this case. Based on government data from October to mid-December, those represent about a third of the revenue from Trump-imposed tariffs.<\/p>\n Ziemba said she expects Congress to support tariffs on China and perhaps approve secondary tariffs, but many other tariffs, like fentanyl tariffs on Canada and Mexico or broad reciprocal tariffs, \u201care unlikely to pass\u201d.<\/p>\n Trump described the tariffs as vital for US economic security, predicting that the country would be defenceless and ruined without them. In November, he told reporters that without his tariffs, \u201cthe rest of the world would laugh at us because they\u2019ve used tariffs against us for years and took advantage of us.\u201d Trump said the US was abused by other countries, including China, the second-largest economy.<\/p>\n After the Supreme Court heard arguments in the case in November, Trump said he would consider alternatives if it ruled against him on tariffs, telling reporters that \u201cwe\u2019ll have to develop a \u2018game two\u2019 plan.\u201d<\/p>\n Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and other administration officials said the US would invoke other legal justifications to retain as many of Trump\u2019s tariffs as possible.<\/p>\n Among others, these include a statutory provision that permits tariffs on imported goods that threaten US national security, and another that allows retaliatory actions, including tariffs against trading partners that the Office of the US Trade Representative determines have used unfair trade practices against US exporters.<\/p>\n None of these alternatives offered the flexibility and blunt-force dynamics that IEEPA provided Trump, and they may not be able to replicate the full scope of his tariffs in a timely fashion.<\/p>\n But, \u201cthe administration is likely to rebuild tariffs through other, more durable, means, [and] the overall tariffs rate may yet end up settling close to current levels,\u201d warned Michael Pearce, Chief US Economist at Oxford Economics. That said, the by-sector and by-country implications could end up looking very different, \u201cwhich will create another bout of trade policy uncertainty for business, investors, and households. This uncertainty is a key downside risk that could ding, rather than derail, growth this year,\u201d Pearce added.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The United States Supreme Court has struck down US President Donald Trump\u2019s sweeping tariffs that he pursued under a law \u2060meant for use in national emergencies, rejecting one of \u2060his most contentious assertions of his authority in a ruling with crucial implications for the global economy. The decision on Friday comes after Trump leveraged tariffs […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12918,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-us-canada-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12917"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12917\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12918"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n
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