Trump Furious as Supreme Court Strikes Down Tariffs – But Says He Has a “Back-Up Plan”
Donald Trump has reacted furiously to the Supreme Court’s ruling that many of his tariffs are illegal, branding it “a disgrace”, but told a White House breakfast he has a back-up plan to circumvent the ruling. The Mail has more.
President Donald Trump fumed on Friday after the Supreme Court made the extraordinary move of ruling against his widespread tariff policy.
Trump was meeting with top governors in the White House when the ruling came down and called it a “disgrace”, according to CNN.
At the same time, Wall Street celebrated as the stock market spiked after the tariff decision was issued.
In a 6-3 decision, penned by conservative Chief Justice John Roberts, the court said Trump did not have the authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 to impose tariffs.
Trump had used the law as a legal footing for his widespread tariff policy, which he boasted would enrich the nation.
The court’s rejection comes despite the President having the benefit of a conservative majority. He appointed three Supreme Court Justices in his first term – Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.
Despite the Court’s 6-3 Rightward lean, Gorsuch and Barrett ruled against the President on Friday, while Kavanaugh penned the dissent.
An estimated $175 billion in tariff revenue is at stake, according to the Penn-Wharton Budget Model, Reuters reported.
On April 2nd, Trump celebrated ‘Liberation Day’, announcing ‘reciprocal’ tariffs on nations around the globe – even on uninhabited islands.
The President used the justification that there was a national emergency due to trade deficits and national security threats.
As he entered office last year, he imposed tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China over fentanyl flooding into the US.
Trump also used tariffs to threaten other countries, such as dangling a 25% tariff on Indian imports due to the country continuing to buy Russian oil.
But Roberts, who was appointed by Republican President George W. Bush, wrote in the ruling that if Congress had intended to allow the President the “distinct and extraordinary power to impose tariffs, it would have done so expressly – as it consistently has in other tariff statutes”.
The Chief Justice said that the “President must ‘point to clear congressional authorisation’ to justify his extraordinary assertion of the power to impose tariffs”.
“He cannot,” Roberts said.
The decision does not impact all of Trump’s sweeping tariffs. His decrees on steel and aluminum were enacted under different laws.
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Seems as if Trump either didn’t really try to subvert the instutions of the American republic or it didn’t work. Will apologies from people who claimed the opposite be forthcoming?
Hardly. What is anyone going to apologise for.? At best we are nothing more than interested observers.
The question was rethorical and addressed at the people who claim that Trump is in the process of eliminating “democracy” in the USA and/or has already done so. His ability to appoint suitable supreme court judges was regarded as an important part of that. Yet, the judges are obviously not in his pocket because if they were, they hadn’t declared a cornerstone of his policies unconstitutional.
Completely agree
I don’t know enough to comment on the judgement but I think it’s reasonable to think that the justices have minds of their own
Roberts seems a bit political sometimes but he voted to overturn Roe with the other conservatives and here are some of them going against Trump, almost as if they were deciding cases on the merits as they see them
So we have a leader in Trump being undermined to do what he promised to do and a leader in Starmer who is doing everything apart from what he promised to do.
How do the people get what they are promised by elected politicians?
“How do the people get what they are promised by elected politicians?“
Hmmmm.
Dunno.
It appears the Dems and Rinos have tied up the US government as much as Labour and Tories tied up this country.
It seems to me any Reform government needs to include in all legislation a clause to say “notwithstanding any other statute” this applies.
I think trump’s tariffs were only ever intended as heavy handed nogotia4ing tactics or else to favour the reshoring of key strategic manufacturing industry- quire why it had been ruled illegal I don’t know, but anyway, in the grand scheme of things it’s probably not a big deal, I think he was foolish to make any sort of song and dance over it.
MAGA optics and PR are often not ideal. I wholeheartedly agree with most of what DT says and does (or attempts to do), but the public face and the execution are often not the best. Which is surprising for someone like him in a country like the US.
Tariffs are taxes. Only people pay taxes. So that $175 billion is paid by somebody, Who? The people in the US.
It is a cost to the economy. Tariffs favour some at the expense of others.
Trump and a large chunk of the population believe that tariffs are paid by people in other Countries who export to the USA. So tariffs are a “gift”.
Tariffs serve only one purpose, to protect the profits of domestic producers by keeping prices high. They “protect” some jobs at the expense of others.
That $175 billion is not an input to the economy, it is an output.
Economists have been writing about this for over 200 years.
Tariffs make imports more expensive and thus, support local production. They’re a lever a government can use to steer the local economy in a certain direction. Eg, in 1871, the new-founded German empire was an agrarian state which could never have competed successfully in the area of industrial production with already industrialized England. It developed quickly into an industrialized state because of tariffs penalizing imports from English manufacturers. In practice, this meant German consumers were subsidizing the development of the German industry but they ultimately also reaped the benefits of that.
There seems to be slightly different stories. It was overturned on a technicality because the wrong regulations were used
Some of Trumps tariffs were overturned because the court found that the law which had been used to justify them didn’t explicitly authorize imposing tariffs.
Yet another example of the Globalist attempt to force a GLOBAL KRITOCRACY = RULE BY JUDGES upon the entire world, crushing both the executive and legislative branches of government. We have seen that time & again everywhere in the West.
Another Globalist aim is to get rid of all monarchies, especially the British one, where they are determined to put an Ethnic African on the throne. Removing Prince Andrew from the line of succession will have no effect at all, since the only thing standing in the way of putting an Ethnic African on the throne is Prince William and his 3 legitimate children. It is Prince Harry and his 2 sprogs of questionable ancestry and therefore questionable legitimacy who should be removed from the line of succession.
Years ago, the Globalists promised to give all the ceremonial trappings of power to Ethnic Africans, making Ethnic Europeans their servants, reserving the real power for Muslims. We shall see whether this plays out.
Why don’t we just accept that judges run the country and have the elected politicians announce what they decide?
Perhaps we could line the judges up against a wall and see how long they can avoid the bullets.