Trump signals imminent Supreme Court appeal to protect tariffs

President Donald Trump delivers remarks in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, Aug. 6, 2025. The president and his advisers have suggested they will fight a court ruling that found many of the administration’s tariffs to be illegal. (Doug Mills/The New York Times)

By TONY ROMM and ANA SWANSON

President Donald Trump signaled that he would ask the Supreme Court as soon as Wednesday to overturn a ruling that found many of his punishing tariffs to be illegal, claiming that an erosion in his power to wage a global trade war would inflict severe financial damage on the United States.

Trump said the administration would ask the justices to render their decision on an “expedited” timeline, as he argued that the new legal uncertainty surrounding his tariffs had contributed to a recent drop in financial markets and could lead to “devastation for our country.”

“If you took away tariffs, we could end up being a third-world country,” Trump said at the White House.

While economists broadly believe the president has overstated the magnitude of the case, the fate of his tariff powers nonetheless remains mired in great legal doubt. A federal appeals court late Friday determined that Trump had vastly overstepped his authority to impose steep duties on nearly every U.S. trading partner, marking the second such defeat for the administration.

For now, the court opted to leave the president’s tariffs in place until Oct. 14, in a move meant to allow the White House time to appeal the case to the Supreme Court. But its decision still threatened to upset the centerpiece of Trump’s strategy. It hinges on his ability to impose tariffs instantly, and seemingly without limit, as a way of raising money, forcing countries to negotiate and attracting domestic industry.

“It’s a liberal court, and it’s going up to the Supreme Court,” Trump said Tuesday, describing the decision as “very shocking.”

Trump added that a loss could put at stake the billions of dollars that the United States had collected in revenue, which it might be forced to pay back, and undermine his campaign to pressure companies into making more of their products domestically. At one point, the president even insisted to reporters that the “stock market needs the tariffs,” despite the fact that investors often have recoiled over his announcement of steep rates.

It is unclear if the Supreme Court intends to hear Trump’s appeal on an expedited basis. But the White House could face an uphill battle, given that legal scholars across the political spectrum have raised myriad objections to its claims to sweeping tariff powers under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.

Congress enacted the law, known as IEEPA, in the 1970s, aiming to empower the president to impose sanctions and embargoes in response to emerging global threats. But Trump has invoked the statute repeatedly in his second term to apply his tariffs, most recently citing it in an executive order that taxed imports from about 90 countries in early August.

On Friday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled 7-4 against Trump’s interpretation, finding it was unlikely that Congress had ever intended to grant the president nearly unlimited authority to impose tariffs as part of that law. The panel of judges sided with small businesses and states, which first prevailed in front of a lower court in May, after judges there similarly ruled that IEEPA did not grant the president “unbounded” powers.

The decision enraged Trump, who savaged the appeals court as partisan in a series of posts on social media through the weekend.

“If a Radical Left Court is allowed to terminate these Tariffs, almost all of this investment, and much more, will be immediately canceled!” he wrote on social media. “In many ways, we would become a Third World Nation, with no hope of GREATNESS again.”

Angela M. Santos, a partner at the law firm ArentFox Schiff, said that the ruling was “great news for importers,” and might give them some hope that they could be refunded for the tariffs they had already paid to the government. However, she added, “this dispute is far from over, the decision might be limited in scope, and importers may not see relief for some time.”

Trump does have other tariff tools at his disposal, but they are more limited than the emergency powers that he has invoked to impose levies of between 10% and 50% on countries around the world.

Statutes such as Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 typically require consultations and investigations that can take several months to carry out. That would prevent the president from arbitrarily raising and lowering tariffs.

Trump has repeatedly used Section 232 to impose tariffs on specific products on national security grounds, including foreign steel and automobiles. Those duties were unaffected by the court ruling Friday. The president is exploring taxes on imported pharmaceuticals, semiconductors and other products under the Section 232 authority.

Other trade laws allow the president to issue sweeping tariffs, but only for a limited period of time. Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, for example, allows a president to impose duties of up to 15% globally for up to 150 days. Another provision of that law, Section 301, allows the president to issue broad tariffs in response to unfair trading practices, after first carrying out consultations and an investigation.

Yet another long-unused statute, Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930, allows the president to impose tariffs of up to 50% on countries that have discriminated against the commerce of the United States.

Trump did not share Tuesday whether his administration was contemplating any of those authorities. The president did signal he would not try to push his tariffs through Congress, saying at one point that the White House did not have the votes in the Senate.

Some of America’s largest trading partners have indicated that they will not be beholden to what the United States decides.

“Tearing up a deal because of a U.S. court ruling would be rubbing salt in Trump’s wound and risk triggering backlash, and not just on trade,” Mujtaba Rahman, who leads European research for the political risk consultancy Eurasia Group, said in an email. He said that European leaders would probably look to leverage the deal by saying, “‘Look we’ll stick with the deal but you too implement it, and no monkey business with digital regulations and taxes.’”

Carsten Brzeski at ING in Germany, said that U.S. court decisions had too often “been challenged or overruled.” “The EU will be very cautious in reacting to it; at least in public,” he said.

U.S. officials have said that a loss could also lead to a diplomatic embarrassment. In statements published hours before the ruling, Trump’s advisers raised particular concern about the trade deals the president had brokered with the European Union and other nations. Those agreements are based on tariffs imposed under the emergency powers act.

Howard Lutnick, the secretary of commerce, said that a ruling against the administration could “lead to retaliation and the unwinding of agreed-upon deals by foreign-trading partners, and derail critical ongoing negotiations with foreign-trading partners.”