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Trump’s Tariffs Are Unlawful, Supreme Court Rules

21 0
20.02.2026

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The U.S. Supreme Court struck down U.S. President Donald Trump’s expansive and unprecedented use of Carter-era legislation to levy tariffs on the whole world, dealing a significant if not fatal blow to the Trump administration’s signature economic policy.

Like lower courts did previously, the Supreme Court found that the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) does not grant the executive branch the authority to arrogate the powers of taxation from Congress, a notion enshrined in the Constitution. The court noted, as several justices had in oral arguments last fall, that the IEEPA never mentions the word “tariffs,” unlike all the other bills that Congress has passed in the last 90 years delegating limited tariff-setting authority to the legislative branch.

The U.S. Supreme Court struck down U.S. President Donald Trump’s expansive and unprecedented use of Carter-era legislation to levy tariffs on the whole world, dealing a significant if not fatal blow to the Trump administration’s signature economic policy.

Like lower courts did previously, the Supreme Court found that the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) does not grant the executive branch the authority to arrogate the powers of taxation from Congress, a notion enshrined in the Constitution. The court noted, as several justices had in oral arguments last fall, that the IEEPA never mentions the word “tariffs,” unlike all the other bills that Congress has passed in the last 90 years delegating........

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