Emergency tariffs ‘beyond Trump authority’
The US Supreme Court has found that emergency legislation does not give President Donald Trump the power to impose tariffs without Congressional approval in peacetime.
The court was ruling in a case taken by two small businesses against the Trump administration’s imposition of sweeping tariffs on countries across the world.
Trump had relied on the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to justify the tariffs, citing an influx of illegal drugs and persistent trade deficits as national emergencies.
In a six-three majority ruling, however, the court said that the US Constitution gave Congress alone the power to impose tariffs during peacetime.
‘Unbounded tariffs’
“The Government reads IEEPA to give the president power to unilaterally impose unbounded tariffs and change them at will,” the judges stated, adding that such a view would represent “a transformative expansion” of the US president’s authority over tariff policy.
“It is also telling that in IEEPA’s half century of existence, no president has invoked the statute to impose any tariffs, let alone tariffs of this magnitude and scope,” they added.
They found that the lack of historical precedent, coupled with the breadth of authority that the president claimed, suggested that the tariffs “extend beyond the president’s ‘legitimate reach’”.
The ruling affects only tariffs imposed under the IEEPA, and not other sector-specific tariffs.