The ruling wipes out the 10 percent tariff Trump imposed last April on nearly every country in the world, as well as specific, higher tariffs on some of the top U.S. trading partners, including Canada, Mexico, China, the European Union, Japan and South Korea.

Trump bristled with anger over the high court’s decision, denouncing it as a profound betrayal of the U.S., while also insisting it would be of little practical consequence because his administration will reimplement similar or larger tariffs using other authorities.

“The Supreme Court’s ruling on tariffs is deeply disappointing, and I’m ashamed of certain members of the court — absolutely ashamed — for not having the courage to do what’s right for our country,” Trump said at a White House press conference hours after the ruling came down.

Trump called the justices in the majority “unpatriotic and disloyal to our Constitution.” And he repeatedly suggested that those justices had acted to satisfy “foreign interests,” although he provided no evidence to support the claim.

While Trump had predicted cataclysmic harm to the U.S. economy if the existing tariffs were ruled illegal, he changed course Friday and argued that the decision could be a net positive because the court had upheld his right to use other legal mechanisms to impose tariffs. He did acknowledge that the alternatives will be “a little bit more complicated” than the sweeping powers the court rejected Friday.

The White House had signaled before the court defeat that it would attempt to use other statutes to keep similar duties in place.

“We’ve been thinking about this plan for five years or longer,” U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer told POLITICO in December. “You can be sure that when we came to the president the beginning of the term, we had a lot of different options”

“My message is tariffs are going to be a part of the policy landscape going forward,” Greer said.

But Trump has repeatedly said that a loss in the tariff case at the Supreme Court would be a “disaster” for the United States, even though critics of his restrictive import tax scheme argue the country prospered for decades with low tariffs.

It undercuts his ability to impose tariffs on a whim to address geopolitical conflict — like a threat to impose tariffs on countries that do business with Iran — and to threaten tariffs as he tries to gain a better negotiating position — like his tariff threats in an attempt to acquire Greenland. Businesses had decried those “national security” tariff threats for fueling economic uncertainty, but the administration said they were necessary for achieving its policy goals.

While Roberts’ ruling was emphatic, the court’s majority was not entirely unified in its rationale.

The six justices who voted to strike down the tariffs agreed that the law Trump cited, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, could not properly be read to authorize tariffs at all. Roberts, Gorsuch and Barrett also invoked a legal theory called the major questions doctrine to conclude that, due to the broad economic impact of tariffs, Congress would need to be particularly clear before shifting its trade-related powers to the president.

The chief justice, Gorsuch and Barrett also rejected arguments from Trump and the dissenting justices that the court should defer to Trump because of the role tariffs play in foreign relations.

“Whatever may be said of other powers that implicate foreign affairs, we would not expect Congress to relinquish its tariff power through vague language, or without careful limits,” Roberts wrote.

In a visit to Georgia Wednesday, Trump touted a steel business he said had been able to boost production because of his widespread use of tariffs, questioned why the Supreme Court would rule against him and needled the justices for taking months to resolve the issue.

The federal government could now be forced to issue billions of dollars in refunds to companies that paid the tariffs the high court ruled illegal. Many companies have already sued to protect their refund claims in the event the court struck down the Trump tariffs.

The majority opinion made no mention of the battle over refunds, but Justice Brett Kavanaugh predicted some chaos in his dissent.

“The United States may be required to refund billions of dollars to importers who paid the IEEPA tariffs, even though some importers may have already passed on costs to consumers or others,” Kavanaugh wrote, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. “The refund process is likely to be a ‘mess,’” he added, quoting an exchange the justices had on the issue during oral argument in November.

Kavanaugh said “context and common sense” supported the conclusion that IEEPA “clearly authorized” the president to impose tariffs, even though that word doesn’t appear in the statute.

The ruling also raises questions about the future of trade deals that the Trump administration has struck with the European Union, Japan, South Korea and other trading partners to reduce the tariffs he targeted at their exports to the United States.

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Via https://www.politico.com/news/2026/02/20/trump-tariffs-supreme-court-ruling-00790687