Supreme Court justices appear skeptical that Trump tariffs are legal
Supreme Court justices on Wednesday expressed skepticism about the legality of aggressive tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump against most of the world’s nations.
Conservative and liberal justices sharply questioned Solicitor General D. John Sauer on the Trump administration’s method for enacting the tariffs, which critics say infringes on the power of Congress to tax.
Lower federal courts ruled that Trump lacked the legal authority he cited under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose the so-called reciprocal tariffs on imports from many U.S. trading partners, and fentanyl tariffs on products from Canada, China and Mexico.
Sauer, who is defending the tariff policy as grounded in the power to regulate foreign commerce, said “these are regulatory tariffs. They are not revenue-raising tariffs.”
“The fact that they raise revenue was only incidental,” Sauer said, shortly after oral arguments in the case began.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, one of the court’s three liberal members, told Sauer, “You say tariffs are not taxes, but that’s exactly what they are.”
“They’re generating money from American citizens, revenue,” Sotomayor said.
She later noted that no president other than Trump has ever used IEEPA to impose tariffs since it became law in 1977.
Justice Neil Gorsuch, one of six conservatives on the court, pressed Sauer on the fact that Trump unilaterally imposed the tariffs by citing purported international emergencies of trade imbalances and the flow of fentanyl into the United States, without Congress authorizing them.
“What happens when the president simply vetoes legislation to take these powers back?” Gorsuch asked.
“So Congress as a practical matter can’t get this power back once it’s handed it over to the president,” Gorsuch said. “It’s a one-way ratchet toward the gradual but continual accretion of power in the executive branch and away from the people’s elected representatives.”
Other conservatives — Chief Justice John Roberts and Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh and Samuel Alito — also pressed Sauer.
The tariffs start at a baseline of 10% on many nations and spike to as high as 50% on goods from India and Brazil.
The tariffs, if allowed to stand, would result in $3 trillion in extra revenue for the United States by 2035, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.
That group last week said the federal government collected $151 billion from customs duties in the second half of fiscal year 2025, “a nearly 300% increase over the same period in” fiscal year 2024.
Source: CNBC.com
