sábado, 21 de fevereiro de 2026
Far right on track for major victory in French Riviera, poll shows
Far right
on track for major victory in French Riviera, poll shows
Le Pen
ally has 10-point lead over center-right incumbent in race to lead Nice.
Photo-Illustration
by Natália Delgado
February
17, 2026 6:00 pm CET
By Victor
Goury-Laffont and Alexandre Léchenet
PARIS —
The French far right is set for a historic performance in Nice next month.
Polling
shared exclusively with POLITICO shows Marine Le Pen ally Eric Ciotti has a
massive 10-point lead in the race to be mayor of the unofficial capital of the
French Riviera.
French
voters’ willingness to grant Le Pen and her allies control of local executives
will be an early indicator of how likely they are to put the far-right National
Rally in power in France’s 2027 presidential election.
Though
Ciotti is not part of the National Rally, his victory in Nice would reverberate
far beyond the city’s pristine beaches. Nice, one of France’s biggest cities,
is nearly three times more populous than the largest city currently
administered by a far-right mayor, Perpignan.
Ciotti’s
strong performance in the survey, conducted by Cluster17 and the first publicly
released poll of its kind, comes as far-right candidates look to make gains
across southern France in big cities such as Nîmes and Toulon.
Other
polls show nearby Marseille, France’s second-largest city, is also in play for
the National Rally.
A
personal contest
The race
in Nice reflects both the struggle of traditional center-right forces to hold
off the far right and a bitter personal rivalry between Ciotti and incumbent
Christian Estrosi, a former member of the conservative Les Républicains party.
Estrosi
hired Ciotti as a parliamentary assistant after being elected to the French
lower house in 1988, and the pair went on to work in tandem until falling out
in 2017 shortly after President Emmanuel Macron’s election.
Ciotti
was president of Les Républicains from 2022 to 2024, but was ousted by his own
party in a dramatic fashion after striking a deal with Le Pen’s National Rally
without the approval of his troops.
Estrosi
advocated for a moderate line and left Les Républicains to join Horizons, a
center-right party founded by Edouard Philippe, a former prime minister and
presidential candidate in 2027.
Ciotti is
backed by the National Rally in his race. His own party, Union of the Rights
for the Republic, blends the far right’s anti-immigration platform while still
supporting more liberal, free-market economic policies.
Estrosi,
who has been in office since 2017, is backed by Les Républicains and Horizons.
The two
left-wing candidates — Juliette Chesnel-Le Roux of the Green Party and Mireille
Damiano of Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s France Unbowed movement — are both projected,
for now, to clear the 10 percent threshold needed to make the runoff in French
local elections, with Chesnel-Le Roux seen obtaining 12 percent of the vote and
Damiano 10 percent.
But even
if they joined forces, the electoral math appears to be working against them in
an affluent city with a large retiree population — demographics that don’t
usually skew left in France. Should both of them withdraw, it would boost
Estrosi’s chances by consolidating voters opposed to the far right behind a
single candidate.
French far right looks for Charlie Kirk moment after activist’s killing
French
far right looks for Charlie Kirk moment after activist’s killing
Following
the killing of 23-year-old activist Quentin Deranque in February 2026, the
French far right is leveraging the event as a pivotal "Charlie Kirk
moment" to delegitimize the left and frame their movement as a victim of
political violence.
Key
Context of the "Charlie Kirk Moment"
The
Reference: The term refers to the September 2025 shooting death of American
ultraconservative activist Charlie Kirk in the United States.
Political
Framing: Former French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin warned that this
moment is being used to portray the "triumphant far right as a
victim" and to marginalize segments of the political spectrum.
The
Killing: Quentin Deranque was fatally beaten during a brawl between far-right
and hard-left activists in Lyon on February 12, 2026; he succumbed to his
injuries on February 14.
Suspects:
Eleven people have been arrested, including two aides to a lawmaker from the
hard-left party France Unbowed (LFI).
National
Response: Jordan Bardella, president of the National Rally (RN), has declared
that "the far left has killed," using the incident to demand bans on
extremist groups and boost his party's mainstream credibility ahead of 2027
presidential elections.
Rallies:
Marches are planned today in Lyon and other cities in memory of Deranque.
Security
Alert: President Emmanuel Macron has called for calm, and Interior Minister
Laurent Nunez has authorized an "extremely large police deployment"
to prevent clashes between extremist groups during these rallies.
French far right looks for Charlie Kirk moment after activist’s killing
French
far right looks for Charlie Kirk moment after activist’s killing
Ahead of
local elections that serve as a bellwether for next year’s presidential
campaign, the National Rally says it is the victim of an increasingly radical
left wing.
February
20, 2026 4:00 am CET
By Marion
Solletty and Victor Goury-Laffont
PARIS —
France’s far right is framing the death of an activist associated with
far-right groups as a moment akin to the murder of Charlie Kirk in the United
States.
The
National Rally has in recent days started pointing to the killing of
23-year-old Quentin Deranque in Lyon as proof the poll-topping populist party
is the victim of an increasingly radical political left, much as the MAGA
movement in the United States did following Kirk’s assassination last year.
With key
municipal elections next month serving as a bellwether of the National Rally’s
electability heading into the 2027 presidential race, the incident has deepened
the fissures in France’s polarized politics and fueled fears of further
violence.
“What
happened to Quentin, it feels like it could have happened dozens of times to
our supporters in recent years,” said National Rally MEP Pierre-Romain
Thionnet.
“Of
course, those are not the same circumstances,” Thionnet said of the Kirk
comparison. “But there are similarities in the way it resonates.”
Deranque
was, unlike Kirk, unknown to the general public before he died Saturday after
taking several blows to the head during a fight that broke out near a
university where MEP Rima Hassan was attending an event.
The
events leading up to the fight that cost Deranque his life remain unclear. The
far-right feminist group Collectif Nemesis said Deranque was providing security
for them at their protest against Hassan and her anticapitalist party, France
Unbowed.
France
Unbowed and its firebrand leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon have been the focus of most
of the fury following revelations that police are investigating whether members
of the now-disbanded antifascist group Young Guard, cofounded by France Unbowed
lawmaker Raphaël Arnault, was involved in the fight.
A judge
on Thursday placed two people under formal investigation for voluntary
homicide, while one of Arnault’s parliamentary assistants was put under formal
investigation for aiding and abetting a crime.
Lyon’s
chief prosecutor told reporters earlier Thursday that he had requested seven
people, including the assistant, be put under formal investigation for
voluntary homicide. The prosecutor said three of the suspects told
investigators that they were or had been affiliated with “ultra-left” groups.
Some acknowledged that they took part in a fight but all denied their intent
was to kill Deranque, the prosecutor said.
Right-wing
shock
National
Rally President Jordan Bardella likened the incident to terrorism at a press
conference Wednesday, as U.S. President Donald Trump had done after Kirk’s
death.
“When an
organization uses terror to impose its ideology, it must be fought with the
same force as terrorist groups,” Bardella said.
France
Unbowed and its firebrand leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon have been the focus of most
of the fury following revelations that police are investigating whether members
of the now-disbanded antifascist group Young Guard was involved in the fight. |
Sameer Al-Doumy/AFP via Getty Images
Marion
Maréchal, Marine Le Pen’s niece and an MEP with Giorgia Meloni’s European
Conservatives and Reformists, is asking the European Parliament to hold a
debate “on the violence of the far left in Europe that threatens our
democracies.”
Meloni
herself weighed in, expressing her “shock” on X before blaming “left-wing
extremism” and “a climate of ideological hatred that is sweeping across several
nations” — sparking yet another feud with French President Emmanuel Macron.
Macron
and his prime minister, Sébastien Lecornu, said France Unbowed must “clean
house.”
France
Unbowed is invoking Kirk’s killing as well, but as a cautionary tale, concerned
about a Trump-like crackdown on universities.
French
Education Minister Philippe Baptiste announced Tuesday he would seek to prevent
political conferences at universities whenever authorities believed they could
lead to confrontation. Hassan, the MEP who had been taking part in a conference
in Lyon during the deadly confrontation, said she feared the government would
respond with “censorship” at universities.
And
French media reported Thursday that Lyon Mayor Grégory Doucet was opposed to
holding a march Saturday to honor Deranque over fears it could lead to more
violence.
Historical
violence
While the
political climate in France appears to have turned more aggressive,
historically most violence has been committed by extreme right-wing groups.
A 2021
study found that of the 43 homicides with ideological motives that occurred
between 1986 and 2014, just four were committed by far-left militants.
The
sociologist who oversaw that work, Isabelle Sommier, told French newspaper Le
Monde in an interview published Thursday that the number of politically
motivated assaults has doubled since 2017, most of them carried out by
ultra-right extremists. She said if authorities determine that Deranque was
killed by an antifascist group because of his political views, he’d be the
first victim of extreme-left violence since the 1980s.
France
Unbowed, for its part, has condemned the violent attack and said they played no
role in it, stressing that the party’s call for a “civic revolution” is
nonviolent. Arnault, the MP whose assistant is being investigated, expressed
“horror and disgust” at the news of Deranque’s death and said he was working
with parliamentary services to terminate the contract of an aide who reportedly
took part in the fight.
The
tragedy isn’t expected to affect France Unbowed’s prospects in the race to lead
Lyon, France’s third-largest city. The party was not expected to win there and
polling obtained exclusively by POLITICO following Deranque’s death shows no
significant change in France Unbowed’s prospects.
The
bigger test will be whether the incident affects the outlook for mayoral races
where France Unbowed candidates are expected to be competitive.
Hyperpolitics by Anton Jäger
POLITICS
AFTER THE END OF THE END OF HISTORY
What
happens when politics is everywhere, yet nothing seems to change? From the
abandoned dance floors of Thatcher's London to the mass mobilizations of Black
Lives Matter, Anton Jäger traces how public life has become infused with
protest, spectacle, and moral urgency - while the old infrastructure of
parties, unions, and civic solidarity has been hollowed out.
Hyperpolitics
revisits the illusions of the "end of history" and dissects the
strange energies that replaced them: viral outrage, endless culture wars, and
the digital rush of causes that flare and vanish overnight. Jäger shows how the
promises of post-Cold War liberalism gave way to a restless, unsteady public
sphere where private passions overflow into politics but rarely build enduring
power.
Ranging
from Guy Debord and Wolfgang Tillmans to Houellebecq's disenchanted fictions,
Hyperpolitics makes sense of a world in which collective action remains
fragmented and the social fabric thinner than ever. For anyone trying to grasp
why our age feels so charged yet so inconsequential, this book offers a vital
map through the new contradictions of our hyperpolitical moment.
Anton Jäger
Anton Jäger
Anton
Jäger (born 1994) is a Belgian historian of political thought and cultural
commentator. He is currently a lecturer at the University of Oxford and a
postdoctoral researcher at the Catholic University of Leuven.
His work
primarily examines the history of capitalism, the crisis of democracy, and the
evolution of political movements.
Hyperpolitics
(2023): His most prominent recent work, which analyzes the shift from the
"post-politics" of the 1990s to a modern state of
hyperpolitics—characterized by high individual engagement but low institutional
organization.
Welfare
for Markets (2023): Co-authored with Daniel Zamora, this book provides a global
intellectual history of Universal Basic Income (UBI).
The
Populist Moment (2023): Co-authored with Arthur Borriello, exploring the
left-wing populist movements that emerged following the 2008 Great Recession.
Academic
and Public Presence
Education:
He earned his PhD from the University of Cambridge, focusing on the history of
American populism.
Writing:
Jäger is a frequent contributor to major publications including The Guardian,
The New York Times, New Left Review, and Jacobin.
Topics of
Interest: He often comments on contemporary European and American politics, the
concentration of extreme wealth, and the changing nature of labor and class.
US envoy Mike Huckabee says it would be ‘fine’ if Israel took all Middle East land
.jpeg)
US envoy
Mike Huckabee says it would be ‘fine’ if Israel took all Middle East land
Rightwing
Trump ally tells Tucker Carlson Israel has biblical right to land from ‘wadi of
Egypt to the great river’
Edward
Helmore
Fri 20
Feb 2026 22.29 GMT
The US’s
ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, has contended to the podcaster Tucker
Carlson that Israel has a biblical right to take over the entire Middle East –
or at least the lion’s share of it.
“It would
be fine if they took it all,” Huckabee said to Carlson during an interview
posted on Friday. The Trump administration appointee and former Arkansas
governor discussed with Carlson interpretations of Old Testament scripture
within the US Christian nationalist movement.
Carlson –
who recently made disputed claims that he was detained at Tel Aviv airport in
Israel – asked Huckabee about a biblical verse in which God promises Abraham
that his descendants will receive land “from the wadi of Egypt to the great
river, the Euphrates – the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites,
Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites and
Jebusites”.
Carlson
pointed out that this area in modern geography would include “like, basically
the entire Middle East”.
“The
Levant … Israel, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon – it’d also be big parts of Saudi
Arabia and Iraq,” Carlson said.
Huckabee
said: “I’m not sure it would go that far, but it would be a big piece of land.”
He
continued: “Israel is a land that God gave, through Abraham, to a people that
he chose. It was a people, a place and a purpose.”
Pressed
by Carlson on whether Israel has the right to that land, Huckabee responded:
“It would be fine if they took it all.”
The
interview with Huckabee was conducted in Israel on a trip that generated
headlines when Carlson claimed he had experienced “bizarre” treatment at Ben
Gurion airport. But Israeli and US officials said he underwent routine security
questioning.
Carlson
has increasingly questioned US support of Israel, moving him from the center to
the fringe of the Make America Great Again movement.
Huckabee
represents a more traditional pro-Israel conservative position.
After
Carlson’s aired his claims of unusual treatment in Tel Aviv, former Israeli
prime minister Naftali Bennett said the former Fox News host was being
“chickenshit”.
“Next
time he talks about Israel as if he’s some expert, just remember this guy is a
phony!” Bennett said in an X post on Wednesday.
Huckabee,
in his own post on X, said: “EVERYONE who comes in/out of Israel (every country
for that matter) has passports checked & routinely asked security
questions.”
The
Israel Airports Authority said in a statement posted to X on Wednesday: “Tucker
Carlson and his entourage were not detained, delayed, or interrogated.”
Mike Huckabee Tells Tucker Israel Can TAKE OVER The ENTIRE Middle East
.jpeg)
Mike
Huckabee Tells Tucker Israel Can TAKE OVER The ENTIRE Middle East
In a
newly released interview with Tucker Carlson on Friday, February 20, 2026, U.S.
Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee stated that it would be "fine if
[Israel] took it all," referring to a vast area of the Middle East
described in biblical scripture.
Key
details from the exchange include:
Biblical
Context: Carlson cited Genesis 15:18, which describes land promised to
Abraham's descendants extending "from the river of Egypt to the great
river, the Euphrates". This region would encompass modern-day Lebanon,
Syria, Jordan, and parts of Iraq and Saudi Arabia.
The
Quote: When pressed on whether he believed Israel has a divine right to this
entire region, Huckabee replied, “It would be fine if they took it all”.
Clarification:
Huckabee immediately followed this by saying he did not believe Israel was
actually seeking to take over those countries. He later characterized his own
remark as “somewhat hyperbolic” and clarified that Israel's current focus is on
maintaining security within its existing borders.
Wider
Discussion: The interview was a confrontational two-and-a-half-hour discussion
covering Israel’s nuclear program, the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, and
Carlson's recent claims of being detained at Ben Gurion Airport.
Huckabee’s
comments have drawn sharp criticism from diplomats and international law
experts, who noted that such statements conflict with the principle of
territorial integrity.
‘Murky Waters’ for Global Businesses After Trump’s Tariff Loss
‘Murky
Waters’ for Global Businesses After Trump’s Tariff Loss
Even
after the Supreme Court invalidated many of the president’s levies, foreign
leaders and executives assume that U.S. tariffs are here to stay, in one form
or another.
Patricia
Cohen
By
Patricia Cohen
Patricia
Cohen covers the global economy from London.
Feb. 21,
2026, 12:00 a.m. ET
The
watershed U.S. Supreme Court ruling on Friday that struck down President
Trump’s go-to method of imposing tariffs upended a cornerstone of the
administration’s trade policy, heaping additional uncertainty on trading
partners and businesses across the globe.
Just how
this latest jolt will affect international commerce and filter down to prices,
jobs and growth in countries around the world remains a big question mark. So
far, the global economy has proved resilient amid the political and economic
turmoil wrought by Mr. Trump’s unpredictable trade moves since he took office
last year.
At the
moment, most economists are betting that, whatever the legal consequences, U.S.
economic policy will not shift meaningfully. Foreign leaders and business
executives are, for the most part, operating under the assumption that as long
as Mr. Trump is in office, tariffs are here to stay in one form or another.
On
Friday, in a news conference after the Supreme Court ruling, Mr. Trump said he
would invoke a portion of law known as Section 122, which no president has ever
used, to impose an across-the-board 10 percent tariff starting in a matter of
days.
“The
Supreme Court ruled on constitutional limits, not trade policy,” Carsten
Brzeski, the global head of macro for ING Research, wrote in a note. “Trump’s
tariff agenda survives with new legal foundations and a messy transition
period.”
Mr.
Brzeski and several other analysts said they did not expect to immediately
alter their forecasts for global growth and trade because of the Supreme
Court’s decision.
Mr. Trump
may not be able to impose tariffs as rapidly or broadly as he has to date,
using a 1977 law that gives the president emergency powers. There are other
provisions he can use to issue more targeted tariffs, either on his own or in
concert with the Republican-controlled Congress.
Foreign
governments, so far, have been circumspect in their public comments, saying
they were reviewing the decision and its potential impact.
But as
tempting as it might be for U.S. trading partners to contemplate reopening
tariff negotiations, policy analysts said most were unlikely to take that
route. For starters, the chances of wrangling a better deal are slight, and
merely asking to renegotiate might irk a president who has already admitted
that his policy decisions are sometimes made out of pique.
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Mr.
Trump, for example, admitted that he raised tariffs on Switzerland to 39
percent, from 31 percent, because the Swiss president “rubbed me the wrong
way.”
Additionally,
as unsettling and unwelcome as U.S. tariffs have been, the current rates at
least have the virtue of eliminating some of the uncertainty that enveloped
businesses and governments last year, when Mr. Trump’s tariff policies
sometimes changed between breakfast and dinner.
Nonetheless,
uncertainty is likely to continue. As William Bain, head of trade policy at the
British Chambers of Commerce, said, the ruling “does little to clear the murky
waters for business.”
Other
geopolitical concerns have sometimes overshadowed tariffs in relations with the
United States. In Europe, national security, the Atlantic alliance and defense
cooperation are all pressing priorities given the war in Ukraine, Russia’s
aggressive stance toward Europe and Mr. Trump’s attempts to acquire Greenland.
Japan and
South Korea, which are also dependent on U.S. security guarantees, are
interested in preserving their relationship with Washington at a time of rising
tensions with China.
With the
fate of many trade agreements already agreed upon now up in the air, the
court’s ruling will also be a factor in upcoming trade negotiations. The United
States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which Mr. Trump signed into law during his
first term, comes up for review this summer.
Analysts
and traders are also considering the impact of the ruling on the large debt
that the United States has racked up. Tariffs have generated more than $200
billion in revenue since April.
Raphael
Bostic, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, said on Friday that
the economic impact of the ruling would depend on whether companies would
receive any tariff refunds. He also said it would depend on how companies
changed their operations in light of the decision.
“Is there
a requirement to pay back the firms that have paid in the tariffs? If so,
that’s a lot of disruption,” Mr. Bostic said.
Many
firms in the United States and elsewhere have already pushed for refunds. The
research firm Capital Economics estimated that if the U.S. Treasury was forced
to issue repayments, the cost would run to $120 billion, or 0.5 percent of
gross domestic product in the United States.
Juan
Pellerano-Rendón, a logistics expert and chief marketing officer at Swap, a
software company, said businesses should not expect a windfall. Refunds, if
they happen, could take months or years.
“No
serious operator is building their year around a potential tariff refund,” Mr.
Pellerano-Rendón said. Most companies have already taken higher shipping,
compliance and supply chain operations costs into account. “There isn’t a
hidden 30 percent margin waiting to be unlocked if tariffs disappear tomorrow,”
he said.
Matthew
Ryan, head of market strategy at the global financial services firm Ebury,
noted that there was a sell-off of the dollar immediately after the Supreme
Court’s ruling.
“The move
probably reflects heightened fiscal concerns,” he said, “as markets fret that
the massive tariff refunds could create a significant U.S. budget shortfall, a
higher deficit and an increase in debt issuance.”
The
Treasury bond market, though, where the U.S. federal government’s debt is
bought and sold by investors, reacted to the news with relative calm. Yields on
government debt, a measure of borrowing costs, have barely budged.
Justice
Brett M. Kavanaugh, in a dissent, warned that the refund process would be a
“mess.”
Mr.
Trump’s wide-ranging tariffs have already begun to reconfigure trade patterns.
Agathe Demarais, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign
Relations, noted that American allies and adversaries had been shifting away
from the United States.
“China
recorded a $1.2 trillion global trade surplus in 2025, the highest ever on
record by any country — highlighting how Chinese firms successfully rerouted
exports to other markets,” she said.
Over the
past year, countries around the world have stepped up efforts to sign trade
agreements that do not include the United States, such as the European Union’s
recent deals with four South American nations and with India.
For all
of the drama surrounding Mr. Trump’s tariffs, global trade still grew 4 percent
overall last year. And the U.S. trade deficit in goods last year reached a
record high.
“The
point is trade has not collapsed,” said Neil Shearing, group chief economist at
Capital Economics.
“The
global economy has proved relatively resilient to tariff uncertainty and rising
trade barriers,” said Eswar Prasad, a professor of trade policy and economics
at Cornell University, “so the effects on global growth are in any event likely
to be quite muted.”
Colby
Smith and Joe Rennison contributed reporting from New York.
Patricia
Cohen writes about global economics for The Times and is based in London.
What will happen to Trump’s tariffs after supreme court verdict?
.jpeg)
Explainer
What will
happen to Trump’s tariffs after supreme court verdict?
6-3
ruling against unilateral imposition of tariffs without congressional approval
labelled a ‘disgrace’ by Trump
Trump
illegally used executive power to impose global tariffs, supreme court rules
Lisa
O’Carroll and Lauren Aratani
Fri 20
Feb 2026 20.05 GMT
The US
supreme court has struck down Donald Trump’s flagship policy of imposing
tariffs on foreign imports in his bid to revitalise American manufacturing. The
US president has reportedly called the decision a “disgrace”. Here’s what it
means, and what could happen next.
What did
the court ruling say?
The court
ruled that Trump exceeded his authority and should have got congressional
approval for the tariffs, which he announced on what he dubbed “liberation day”
last April. The tariffs, set at varying rates, covered dozens of countries from
war-torn Syria and impoverished Lesotho to the UK, China, Canada, Mexico, Japan
and EU countries.
The
conservative-majority court ruled six to three in the judgment, saying the
International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) – the 1977 law designed to
address national emergencies Trump had used to implement them – “does not
authorise the president to impose tariffs”.
The
decision affirms earlier findings by lower courts that tariffs Trump imposed
under the IEEPA were illegal.
Will
Trump now abandon his tariff war?
Nope.
Trump – who faces a backdrop of slowing economic growth – has made it clear
that he is not backing down from his trade war.
Hours
after the ruling, Trump held a press conference where he vowed to keep tariffs
in place using a different law than the IEEPA.
He
announced a new 10% global tariff and said that his administration would
conduct additional “investigations” into unfair trading practices using the
Trade Act of 1974. The US president said he felt emboldened to continue his
trade war because the court curbed his powers under the IEEPA only.
“We have
other ways, numerous other ways,” Trump said. “While I am sure that they did
not mean to do so, the supreme court’s decision today made a president’s
ability to both regulate trade and impose tariffs more powerful and more
crystal clear, rather than less.”
The US
treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, said that the administration planned to use
sections of the Trade Act of 1974 to enact the new tariffs, which “will result
in virtually unchanged tariff revenue in 2026”, according to treasury
estimates.
While the
White House has these other alternative routes to pass tariffs, there are more
restrictions in the form of capped amounts and durations of tariffs, along with
procedural prerequisites such as investigations and hearings.
The
administration will pass a 10% global tariff under Section 122 of the Trade Act
of 1974, which allows tariffs of up to 15% to address “fundamental
international payments problems”. The law caps the tariff at 150 days while the
president addresses alleged “large and serious” deficits in the country’s
balance of payments.
Other
sections of the Trade Act will require an investigation that determines whether
the tariffs are necessary for national security or will remedy unfair trade
practices.
Trump
acknowledged that the White House would have to do more work but said,
ultimately, that the tariffs would not stop.
“We’re
using things that some people thought we should have used in the first place
but it’s a little more complicated. The process takes a little more time, but
the end result is going to get us more money,” he said.
When
asked whether existing trade deals with foreign countries were affected by the
ruling, Trump said: “Many of them stand. Some of them won’t, and they’ll be
replaced with the other tariffs.”
Trump’s
annual State of the Union address next week could further shed light on his
next steps.
Companies
that have invested significant time and money to adapt to America’s new import
red tape will not adjust supply chains again until they know the long-term
plan.
Richard
Rumbelow, director of international business at Make UK, said: “As the
situation continues to evolve, businesses now need clear, practical guidance on
how the ruling will be implemented, alongside progress on resolving the
remaining section 232 tariffs on UK steel and aluminium.”
Will the
tariffs be paid back?
Tariff
revenues for last year are estimated to have been between $240bn and $300bn,
most of it owing to US manufacturers and consumers. The cost to the US
government could be vast if it is forced to pay the money back to US importers.
Erin
McLaughlin, senior economist of US thinktankthe Conference Board, says that
“many studies show that US firms have paid 90% of that”, with much of it passed
on to the consumer through price rises in shops.
Even if
the US administration was forced to pay that back, it would “not be paid back
soon”, she said. The supreme court justice Brett Kavanaugh said the refund
process was likely to be a “mess”. Trump on Friday dismissed the idea of any
refunds. “It’s not [being] discussed. We’ll end up being in court for the next
five years.”
Trade
lawyers say importers are likely to get money back – eventually. “It’s going to
be a bumpy ride for awhile,” says Joyce Adetutu, a partner at the Vinson +
Elkins law firm.
The
refund process is likely to be hashed out by a mix of the US Customs and Border
Protection agency, the specialized court of international trade in New York and
other lower courts, according to a note to clients by lawyers at the legal firm
Clark Hill.
“The
amount of money is substantial,” Adetutu says. “The courts are going to have a
hard time. Importers are going to have a hard time.’’
What have
the UK and the EU said?
The UK’s
Department for Business and Trade (DBT) said the ruling did not affect the
preferential deal the UK negotiated on steel, automobiles (10% down from 27.5%)
and pharma, which has zero tariffs compared with 15% in the EU.
“The UK
enjoys the lowest reciprocal tariffs globally, and under any scenario we expect
our privileged trading position with the US to continue. We will work with the
administration to understand how the ruling will affect tariffs for the UK and
the rest of the world,” said a spokesperson for the DBT.
The
European Commission trade spokesperson, Olof Gill, said it was analysing the
ruling “carefully”.
“Businesses
on both sides of the Atlantic depend on stability and predictability in the
trading relationship. We therefore continue to advocate for low tariffs and to
work towards reducing them,” he added.
The
German confederation of industries, BDI, said the ruling sent a “strong signal
for the rules-based trade order”.
Can the
EU-US trade deal be paused again by MEPs?
The EU
parliament has yet to ratify a deal struck in Scotland last year and may well
decide to pause it again on fresh legal grounds.
MEPs
paused and then unpaused it amid the diplomatic row over tariff threats related
to Trump’s bid to take over Greenland.
A formal
vote of the International Partnership Committee is due on Tuesday, followed by
a session of all MEPs, expected in early March.
With
Associated Press
The supreme court’s tariffs ruling puts Trump on notice with a bloody nose
The
supreme court’s tariffs ruling puts Trump on notice with a bloody nose
On
February 20, 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court dealt a major blow to President
Trump’s economic agenda by ruling 6–3 that he lacked the authority to
unilaterally impose sweeping global tariffs under the International Emergency
Economic Powers Act (IEEPA).
The
ruling in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump and Trump v. V.O.S. Selections,
Inc. effectively invalidated the "Liberation Day" and
"Reciprocal Tariffs" that had been a centerpiece of his second-term
trade policy.
Key
Aspects of the Ruling
Congressional
Power Reaffirmed: Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts
emphasized that the power to lay and collect taxes—which includes tariffs—is
reserved exclusively for Congress under Article I of the Constitution. The
Court found that IEEPA’s language about "regulating importation" does
not grant the president the "extraordinary power" to raise revenue
through taxes.
The 6-3
Majority: Roberts was joined by the three liberal justices and two Trump
appointees, Justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett. Their defection
sparked immediate fury from the President, who labeled the decision a
"disgrace" and accused the justices of being "unpatriotic"
and "swayed by foreign interests".
Billion-Dollar
Refund Crisis: While the Court did not immediately order refunds, the ruling
leaves the administration facing potential claims for $160 billion to $175
billion in duties already collected from U.S. importers.
Trump’s
Immediate Pivot
Despite
the "bloody nose" from the Court, the President moved within hours to
bypass the ruling using different legal authorities:
Section
122 Blanket Tariff: Trump signed an executive order imposing a 10% global
tariff under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974. This law allows for tariffs
to address balance-of-payment problems but is limited to a 150-day duration
unless extended by Congress.
New
Investigations: The administration launched new "unfair trade"
investigations under Section 301, seeking more permanent legal grounds to
reimpose higher levies on specific countries.
Intact
Duties: The ruling does not affect tariffs imposed under Section 232 (national
security), such as those on steel and aluminum, which remain in place.
Critics
and legal experts view this as a rare instance of the conservative-leaning
Court successfully checking the expansion of executive power, forcing the
administration to seek specific congressional approval for long-term,
broad-scale tariff policies.
The supreme court’s tariffs ruling puts Trump on notice with a bloody nose
Analysis
The
supreme court’s tariffs ruling puts Trump on notice with a bloody nose
Ed
Pilkington
The
conservative-heavy court had largely given Trump everything he desired – until
now, when two of his three nominees turned his back on him
Sat 21
Feb 2026 10.00 GMT
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/21/trump-tariffs-ruling-supreme-court
After an
agonising year in which the US supreme court has stood aside and watched while
Donald Trump has run roughshod over the constitutional separation of powers,
the highest judicial panel has finally stirred itself to set boundaries on the
president’s increasingly regal pose.
Friday’s
supreme court ruling declared Trump’s sweeping tariffs unlawful, yanking from
the president the bloodied cudgel which he has used to beat foreign friend and
foe alike.
With
midterm elections just nine months away, Trump has also been deprived of a key
weapon in his second-presidency armory.
“At
last,” exclaimed Barb McQuade, a law professor at the University of Michigan.
The court had remembered “that Congress is a separate and co-equal branch of
government … One of Trump’s favorite levers is removed from the arsenal of
extortion.”
The
ruling came as a jolt, and Trump wasted no time venting his fury against the
justices who had defied him. He denigrated them on social media in an all-caps
personalised attack that was extraordinary, even by his norm-shattering
standards.
The three
liberal-leaning justices who were part of the majority ruling were “FOOLS” and
“LAPDOGS”, the six who had voted against his tariffs were universally beholden
to foreign countries, while the three rightwingers who dissented were imbued
with “strength, wisdom, and love of our Country”.
Trump’s
rant belies the truth of the current supreme court – that so far into his
second presidency it has largely given him everything he has desired. Over the
past year the conservative justices who command a super-majority, dribbling out
their opinions in bits and pieces, have provoked mounting alarm among
constitutional jurists and democracy advocates.
Even
before Trump had returned to the White House, they had granted him the
authoritarian’s gift of Trump v US. The ruling gave him absolute immunity from
criminal prosecution for official presidential acts, or as some observers
framed it, the “power of a king”.
During
his first year back in office, the court has issued 24 temporary rulings on its
opaque “shadow docket”. Collectively, these emergency decisions have given the
benefit of the doubt to Trump, overturning many brave efforts by lower court
judges to contain him.
Several
of those rulings allowed Trump, at least in the short term, to trample over
powers reserved for Congress, such as restrictions on the president’s power to
fire the heads of government agencies.
Friday’s
tariff ruling pulls back from that abyss. Learning Resources v Trump dismisses
Trump’s invoking of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) as
justification for his global tariffs.
The
legislation did not give Trump the authority to impose tariffs, the ruling
bluntly states. Tariffs are taxes, and the power of taxation, is solely
bequeathed to Congress as the keeper of the nation’s purse.
Students
of the top court will spend the coming weeks and months poring over the
ruling’s finer details for clues as to the swirling currents of power among the
nine justices.
Already,
some pointers are clear.
First
off, John Roberts is back. The rightward drift of the court, combined with
critical rulings like the anti-abortion Dobbs in which Roberts found himself in
the minority, led some to wonder whether the chief justice was losing his grip
over his own court.
Friday’s
ruling sees the chief justice back in the driving seat, both as author of the
tariffs ruling and as architect of its unexpected 6-3 voting composition. Not
the 6-3 to which America has grown painfully accustomed: six conservatives to
three sorely-outgunned liberals.
It’s a
6-3 in which Roberts was joined by two fellow rightwingers, in an alliance with
the three liberal-leaning justices, to deliver Trump a collective bloody nose.
Those two
other rightwingers are boomingly significant. Both of the conservatives who
followed Roberts into the majority were placed on the court by none other than
Trump.
Neil
Gorsuch took over the late Antonin Scalia’s seat in 2017 after almost a year in
which senate Republicans held the position open, depriving Barack Obama of his
pick. Amy Coney Barrett was chosen by Trump in 2020 following the death of the
liberal icon Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
That two
out of his three supreme court nominees turned their back on him inflamed
Trump’s response to the ruling. In a White House press conference shortly after
the judgment came down, he singled out his nominees who, from his narcissistic
perspective, have betrayed him.
Trump is
certainly not the only US president to have thrown a hissy-fit at supreme court
justices who had the temerity to uphold the rule of law. But the way he
expressed such thoughts openly and in public, pitched in such personal and
vitriolic terms, that places him in a class of one.
“I think
their decision was terrible,” he said, referring to Barrett and Gorsuch. “I
think it’s an embarrassment to their families.”
Of the
two, Barrett’s vote is the least surprising. Over the past five years, she has
displayed an independent streak that has seen her forge agreement with the
liberal-leaning justices on several occasions.
Gorsuch’s
stance is more jarring, and will take time to process. In almost a decade on
the top court he has been reliably conservative, forming a new wedge of
hard-right jurisprudence along with those other crusty hardliners, Clarence
Thomas and Samuel Alito.
His vote
with the majority says more perhaps about Trump’s excesses than it does about
Gorsuch’s brand of conservatism. The president’s disdain for constitutional
inconveniences, his tendency to blow raspberries at the other supposedly
co-equal branches of government, can rile one as avowedly committed to the
original meaning of the constitution as Gorsuch.
“Whatever
else might be said about Congress’s work in IEEPA, it did not clearly surrender
to the President the sweeping tariff power he seeks to wield,” the justice
writes in his concurring opinion.
How this
new 6-3 configuration will play out in the longer term is another matter for
scrutiny. Its existence does suggest that some of Trump’s other clearly
unconstitutional actions are also vulnerable, notably his attempt to destroy
birthright citizenship as enshrined in the 14th amendment.
Friday’s
ruling puts Trump on notice. Though the president responded to the ruling as
though he were impervious, immediately announcing a new raft of tariffs under
different legislative authority, the court has made itself clear: there is a
limit.
But those
tempted to be starry-eyed about this juncture should also be put on notice.
There is a limit too to the supreme court’s beneficence.
As Lisa
Graves, an expert on the rightwing legal movement, put it: “This ruling is not
judicial courage. This is the Roberts court doing the bare minimum to rein in
Trump’s abuse of power.”
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