The Supreme Court’s decision is clear. The president did not have the authority to impose most of his tariffs.

Trump argued that, under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, his actions were justified because of a national emergency caused by a foreign threat. In the 6-3 ruling, the Court said that, on the contrary, that Act provides Congress with that authority, which hadn’t delegated it to the president. The tariffs left standing are largely by sector: cars, semiconductors, steel.

Trump, like the infamous honey badger, don’t care.

The president immediately insulted the six justices who ruled against him, calling them “disloyal, unpatriotic” and “lapdogs…for the radical left Democrats.” Then he turned around and reimposed a global 15 percent tariff rate.

For a lot of countries, that new rate is actually an improvement. Mexico and Canada have faced higher tariffs, at least for products not covered under the existing US-Mexico-Canada Agreement. China, Brazil, and India will also benefit from the Court decision. But for countries that negotiated lower rates with the Trump team—Japan, Indonesia—it’s a slap in the face. That should teach them to made deals with the devil.

To justify his reassertion of tariffs, Trump is using another law, which establishes a ceiling of 15 percent and a 150-day limit before Congress can weigh in. No previous president has invoked this law to impose tariffs. For good reason: its provisions reference not a trade deficit but an “international payments problem” connected to fixed exchange rates and the gold standard, a world that no longer exists. As such, Trump is simply graduating from one illegality to another. It may not be long before Trump dispenses altogether with his misinterpretation of esoteric laws to sanctify his lawlessness.

A sensible president might have used the Court decision as an opportunity to jettison an unpopular policy and pivot toward “affordability” in the run-up to the mid-term elections in November, as his advisors have been urging. But that’s not Trump’s style. He almost always doubles down in the face of resistance.

And resistance there will be. The Court ruling opens up the possibility for companies to file suit against the U.S. government to recover costs associated with the tariffs. In his dissenting opinion, Brett “OG Lapdog” Kavanagh warned that this could usher in a........

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