Trump illegally overstepped executive power with global tariffs, supreme court rules

 

Trump illegally overstepped executive power with global tariffs, supreme court rules

 

Ruling is blow to Trump’s bold assertions of authority and topples key pillar of aggressive economic agenda

 

Callum Jones in New York

Fri 20 Feb 2026 15.16 GMT

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/20/trump-supreme-court-tariffs-ruling

 

Donald Trump overstepped his authority by imposing most of his steep tariffs on global imports, the US supreme court ruled on Friday, toppling a key pillar of the president’s aggressive economic agenda.

 

In a 6-3 ruling, the court decided that a 1977 law designed to address national emergencies did not provide the legal justification for most of the Trump administration’s tariffs on countries across the world.

 

The ruling was a significant blow for one of Trump’s boldest assertions of executive power since his return to the White House.

 

While the president has claimed that tariffs would fill US federal coffers, revitalize the country’s industrial heartlands and make the world economy more “fair” to the US, economists have repeatedly warned they risk raising prices further for Americans after years of heightened inflation.

 

Tariffs typically need to be approved by Congress, which has sole authority under the constitution to levy taxes. But Trump argued that he had the right to impose tariffs on trading partners under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA, which in some circumstances grants the president authority to regulate or prohibit international transactions during a national emergency.

 

During oral arguments, the US solicitor general, D John Sauer, said – despite the president claiming for months that they would raise trillions of dollars for the US federal government – that tariffs weren’t really about money.

 

“These are regulatory tariffs,” Sauer assured the court. “They are not revenue-raising tariffs. The fact that they raise revenue is only incidental.”

 

Supreme court justices expressed skepticism over the administration’s position. “I just don’t understand this argument,” said the liberal justice Sonia Sotomayor. “You want to say tariffs are not taxes, but that’s exactly what they are.”

 

Even some conservatives on the bench – controlled by a rightwing supermajority crafted by Trump – sounded doubtful. “The vehicle is the imposition of taxes on Americans, and that has always been a core power of Congress,” said the chief justice, John Roberts.

 

Trump has repeatedly declared that the court’s decision would have a seismic effect on the US – the ruling amounted to the “difference between going bankrupt and thriving”, he suggested a day after oral arguments – and his ability to “make America great again”.

 

More details soon …