On Wednesday, President Donald Trump announced sweeping new tariffs on pretty much everything imported into the United States. Among other things, the tariffs include a 10 percent minimum tax of imports outside of North America, a hodgepodge of different tax rates on Canadian and Mexican goods, a 25 percent tax on cars manufactured outside the US, and a chaotic mix of country-specific tariffs ranging from 10 to 50 percent.

Trump’s tariffs are likely to deal a significant self-inflicted blow to the US economy. As of this writing, the S&P 500 — a common index used to track US stock prices — is down about 4 percent. The Budget Lab at Yale predicts that the tariffs will cause enough inflation to effectively reduce the average US household’s annual income by $3,789 in 2024 dollars. A similar analysis by Auckland University of Technology economics professor Niven Winchester predicts a $3,487 blow to US households.

Thus far, Trump’s second presidential term has been a series of staring contests between Trump and the courts. Trump’s tariffs could lead to yet another, though the answer to the question of whether a lawsuit challenging them might succeed is quite unclear. And not just because the Supreme Court has shown great solicitude for Trump in recent years. The federal laws governing tariffs give the president very broad authority over trade policy generally, and specifically over tariff rates. A court concerned solely with following the text of federal law is likely to uphold Trump’s tariffs.

But the current Supreme Court is not such a court. During the Biden administration, the Court’s Republican majority frequently used a novel legal doctrine known as “major questions” to strike down executive branch actions they deemed too ambitious. Under the doctrine, the courts are supposed to cast a particularly skeptical eye on executive branch actions “of vast ‘economic and political significance” — like, say, a new tax policy that is likely to cost the average American household thousands of dollars a year.

The major questions doctrine

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