Supreme Court agrees to review Trump’s sprawling tariffs
- The San Juan Daily Star
- 1 day ago
- 3 min read
By ANN E. MARIMOW and ADAM LIPTAK
The Supreme Court earlier this week agreed to a fast-track review of the Trump administration’s sweeping tariffs, accepting a case that will test the limits of executive power and the president’s signature economic initiative.
The court set a brisk briefing schedule and said it would hear arguments in early November.
A federal appeals court last month invalidated many of President Donald Trump’s punishing global tariffs, saying the law he relied on did not authorize the administration’s program. The import taxes remain in effect while the litigation continues.
In a 7-4 ruling in late August, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit said the president had unlawfully used the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose steep taxes on major U.S. trading partners.
Last week, Trump’s lawyers urged the justices to review the ruling quickly by adding the case to the court’s calendar for the new term that begins in October. They issued a stark warning against allowing the appeals court ruling to stand, saying it threatens to unwind trade deals.
“That decision casts a pall of uncertainty upon ongoing foreign negotiations that the president has been pursuing through tariffs over the past five months, jeopardizing both already negotiated framework deals and ongoing negotiations,” according to the filing from Solicitor General D. John Sauer.
“Few cases have so clearly called out for this court’s swift resolution.”
While the Supreme Court’s conservative majority has repeatedly granted Trump’s emergency requests and cleared the way for the administration to at least temporarily put into place its policies, the tariffs case will be the first occasion for the justices to hear arguments and weigh the underlying legal merits of a key administration priority.
Five small businesses and a dozen states sued over the tariffs, saying Trump’s actions were unlawful and that the powers to tax must remain with Congress. Their position has support from a coalition of prominent conservative and libertarian lawyers, scholars and former officials.
“These unlawful tariffs are inflicting serious harm on small businesses and jeopardizing their survival. We hope for a prompt resolution of this case for our clients,” Jeffrey Schwab, senior counsel at the Liberty Justice Center, said in a statement.
The Constitution generally gives Congress the power to tax. But a 1977 statute gives the president broad emergency powers to “deal with any unusual and extraordinary threat” to “the national security, foreign policy or economy of the United States.” That includes the power to regulate imports. The president’s lawyers say that language affords him the authority to impose tariffs when he believes an emergency exists.
Trump and his economic advisers say the tariffs and subsequent negotiations with trading partners are reversing decades of trade policies that have reduced U.S. manufacturing capacity and military readiness. The levies, they argue, have spurred other countries to invest in the U.S. economy.
But the appeals court said the emergency law does not give Trump the authority to impose his sprawling tariffs program. The majority did not decide whether the statute might allow the president to impose more limited tariffs, finding Trump’s particular program so significant and enduring that it must be expressly authorized by Congress.
Trump used the emergency law last month to tax imports from about 90 countries and previously invoked it to impose tariffs on China, Canada and Mexico.
Other presidents have invoked the emergency statute, typically to issue sanctions, but Trump is the first to try to use the emergency powers to impose broad levies of 10% to 50% on trading partners. The administration can turn to other statutes to impose tariffs, but they are more limited than the emergency powers he has relied on.
Separately, the Supreme Court in June refused to fast-track a second case from two toy manufacturers challenging part of the president’s tariffs program. In that case, the companies were seeking to bypass the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which has scheduled argument for Sept. 30. A district court judge sided with the companies, finding that the tariffs were not authorized under the emergency statute and were “an existential threat to their businesses.”
Lawyers for the toy manufacturers renewed their request to the justices in a filing on Sept. 4, asking the court to consider consolidating and expediting the pair of cases involving tariffs.