Trump Attacks Justices as “Unpatriotic and Disloyal” After Tariffs Ruling

The United States Supreme Court ruled on Friday that most tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump on nearly every country in the world were done so illegally.

The decision upholds a lower court ruling that found the tariffs to be unconstitutional, and thus, unenforceable.

In a 6-3 ruling, Chief Justice John Roberts, who penned the majority opinion, explained that the court disagreed with the Trump administration’s view that the executive branch could impose tariffs at will, without congressional approval, by determining they were warranted through so-called “national emergencies.” However, the main law that the administration cited in its defense of the tariffs, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), does not include the word “tariff” in it, let alone confer the power for presidents to issue tariffs or other taxes unilaterally.

“The President asserts the independent power to impose tariffs on imports from any country, of any product, at any rate, for any amount of time,” Roberts wrote. But the wording of IEEPA “cannot bear such weight.”

The majority also noted that the powers of imposing “taxes, duties, imposts, and excises” rest within Congress’s powers, not the president’s.

“When Congress has delegated its tariff powers, it has done so in explicit terms, and subject to strict limits,” Roberts wrote in the opinion.

Paraphrasing the administration’s arguments, Roberts recognized that Trump believes he has “power to unilaterally impose unbounded tariffs” based on his loose interpretation of IEEPA. “All it takes to unlock that extraordinary power is a Presidential declaration of emergency, which the Government asserts is unreviewable,” Roberts noted.

But that view would be a “transformative expansion” of the “President’s authority over tariff policy,” he added, “and indeed — as demonstrated by the exercise of that authority in this case — over the broader economy as well.”

“It would replace the longstanding executive-legislative collaboration over trade policy with unchecked Presidential policymaking,” the majority opinion stated.

The court’s majority added:

The President asserts the extraordinary power to unilaterally impose tariffs of unlimited amount, duration, and scope. In light of the breadth, history, and constitutional context of that asserted authority, he must identify clear congressional authorization to exercise it.

The court also recognized that, “until now no President has read IEEPA to confer such power.”

“We claim no special competence in matters of economics or foreign affairs. We claim only, as we must, the limited role assigned to us by Article III of the Constitution,” the court concluded. “Fulfilling that role, we hold that IEEPA does not authorize the President to impose tariffs.”

Some tariffs remain unaffected by the ruling, including “industry-specific” taxes on steel, aluminum, lumber, and automotive parts.

Roberts was joined in the majority ruling by Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson. Justices Clarence Thomas, Brett Kavanaugh, and Samuel Alito dissented.

MS NOW legal analyst and former U.S. Attorney Joyce White Vance said that, while those three conservative justices typically side with Trump on many other cases, the choice for them to dissent in this case was still surprising.

“The most shocking thing about this decision: 3 Justices would have let Trump use a statute that doesn’t mention tariffs to impose unrestricted ones,” Vance wrote in a Bluesky post.

Tariffs are a tax imposed on imported goods. While Trump has claimed that other countries are paying for them, the real costs get offset to consumers after the prices are adjusted to account for the new tax. Thus, many economists view tariffs as a regressive form of taxation.

In addition to their decision on tariffs, Friday’s ruling also brings into question the possibility of other “national emergency” orders issued by the president facing scrutiny by the judiciary in the future.

People familiar with Trump’s initial reaction to the ruling state that he is furious with the decision. One source, speaking to CNN, quoted Trump as saying to his aides, “These fucking courts.”

In a press briefing held on Friday afternoon, Trump attacked the justices’ ruling.

“They’re very unpatriotic and disloyal to our Constitution,” Trump said during a press briefing after the ruling.

“Trump’s attack was notable because he didn’t address the core issue of the case — whether Congress granted him the authority he claimed — and immediately argued that the decision was motivated by politics, by unnamed foreign interests, and by justices who are ‘a disgrace to the nation,'” New York Times White House and National Security Correspondent David E. Sanger observed.

Trump also announced he would use a separate authority to impose a 10 percent global tariff, which is allowed under a law separate from IEEPA. He said he will sign an executive order on that tariff later on Friday.

The 10 percent global tariff, however, would actually lessen most of the tariffs he has imposed on other countries.

Trump has frequently claimed that tariffs have led to better economic outcomes for the U.S., despite plenty of data demonstrating otherwise. Indeed, the “Trump economy” hasn’t been as stellar as the administration has suggested, with 2025 being the worst non-recession year for jobs growth in more than two decades. A report on the country’s GDP released on Friday also showed that last year was the slowest for economic growth in the U.S. since the pandemic. Tariffs have also been responsible for rising costs in consumer prices, including large increases in some staple grocery store items.

Trump has dismissed criticisms of an “affordability” crisis as a political “hoax” against him.

The White House has also dubiously claimed that tariffs were helping the U.S. on the issue of national security. Some experts believe, however, that just the opposite is the case — that tariffs have hindered collaboration with other countries, and thus have made the country less safe.

“These tariffs antagonized many of America’s closest security partners,” the Brookings Institute’s Geoffrey Gertz wrote in September. “Moreover, the Trump administration’s frequent recourses to national security on flimsy grounds will make it more difficult for the U.S. to push back when other countries cloak protectionism in tenuous appeals to national security.”

Legal observers questioned what would be done now with the revenues collected from Trump’s illegal tariffs, noting that the justices did not address that matter in their ruling. Some speculated the president would seek to use the money to his advantage in some way, rather than refunding back to companies that had to initially pay for them, or to the people who had to bear the brunt of the costs after those companies raised prices.

“No word on what to do with the $134B in tariffs illegally collected from 301,000 businesses. My bet is Trump finds a way to grift it for himself,” human rights lawyer and frequent Trump critic Qasim Rashid wrote on Bluesky.

“I’m guessing that given there is no plainly articulated remedy, Trump will attempt to just cut checks from tariff revenues to everyone as a midterm gift,” said constitutional law professor Anthony Michael Kreis.

Others speculated that Trump would indeed try to reimpose the tariffs that the court struck down, though doing so would be incredibly difficult.

“Trump will have a plan to reconstruct a lot of his tariffs after this SCOTUS ruling through a combination of other legal authorities,” said economic analyst and data journalist Joey Politano. “But those authorities are more narrow and process-intensive, so he has lost the ability to just rapidly slap tariffs on any country on a day’s notice.”