Following the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling overturning his emergency tariffs, President Donald Trump is recalibrating his tariff agenda — and prompting a new political debate around the issue driving his economic agenda.
On Friday, Trump said he will sign an order to impose a 10% global tariff above existing tariff rates under a different authority than the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, the emergency powers the Supreme Court said cannot be applied so broadly.
The new authority — Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, which allows him to levy up to 15% tariffs for as many as 150 days before having to go to Congress — raises new complications, however.
“This is going to move it from being a legal battle as such to a political battle,” Trump ally and former Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross told NOTUS.
Trending
Trump’s new plan faces an increasingly tariff-skeptical Congress, where Republicans in both chambers have joined Democrats to rebuke Trump’s tariffs.
Those Republicans expressed support for the Supreme Court’s decision on Friday.
“Today’s Supreme Court ruling reaffirms that only Congress has the constitutional authority to impose tariffs, and the President can only do so under a clear and limited delegation of authority from Congress,” Sen. Susan Collins, who chairs the Appropriations Committee, said in a post on X.
Rep. Kevin Kiley, who led House Republicans in defeating a rule from Speaker Mike Johnson that included a monthslong ban on resolutions disapproving of Trump’s tariffs, repeated his argument that tariffs are a “checks and balances” issue.
“Last week’s vote by Congress and today’s Supreme Court decision represent precisely that give-and-take envisioned by the Founders,” Kiley said on X.
Collins’ and Kiley’s Republican colleagues echoed their support for the Supreme Court’s ruling on separation of powers, including Sens. John Curtis and Mitch McConnell, as well as Reps. Don Bacon, Jeff Hurd, Thomas Massie, and Mike Turner.
The skittishness from many Republicans is far from universal. Johnson defended Trump’s tariffs after the decision, along with many Republican lawmakers.
“No one can deny that the President’s use of tariffs has brought in billions of dollars and created immense leverage for America’s trade strategy and for securing strong, reciprocal America-first trade agreements,” Johnson wrote in a post to X on Friday. “Congress and the Administration will determine the best path forward in the coming weeks.”
Last week, Johnson argued Congress should wait for the court’s ruling before voting to disapprove of Trump’s tariffs. His provision, which was voted down, would have banned privileged resolutions of disapproval on the tariffs through July.
The Supreme Court decision received a lukewarm reaction from Johnson’s counterpart in the upper chamber. Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Senate Republicans will work with the administration and the House to “advance our shared goal to strengthen rural America.”
“Tariffs can be an important and effective tool to address unfair trade practices and help level the playing field with foreign competitors,” Thune wrote on X.
Others in the party called for more forceful action by Congress to uphold Trump’s tariffs.
“SCOTUS’s outrageous ruling handcuffs our fight against unfair trade that has devastated American workers for decades,” Sen. Bernie Moreno said in a post on X. “This betrayal must be reversed and Republicans must get to work immediately on a reconciliation bill to codify the tariffs that had made our country the hottest country on earth!”
The mixed reactions from Republicans spell a politically complicated path forward for Trump’s signature economic idea.
Forging ahead on the Trump tariff regime risks extending a politically unpopular economic policy that has thrust cost-of-living concerns to the center of the midterm elections.
Trump administration officials have repeatedly denied that tariffs raised prices for American consumers, despite a recent report from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to the contrary.
Ross said the ruling has “weakened” the president’s negotiation positions with foreign countries, despite Trump’s claims that he has actually been empowered by the justices’ decision and created an electoral complication come November.
“You can be sure the Democrats will use this against him,” Ross said.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh argued that Trump can effectively replicate his tariff regime in a dissenting opinion that Trump praised effusively in remarks on Friday.
“The decision might not substantially constrain a President’s ability to order tariffs going forward. That is because numerous other federal statutes authorize the President to impose tariffs and might justify most (if not all) of the tariffs at issue in this case—albeit perhaps with a few additional procedural steps that IEEPA, as an emergency statute, does not require,” Kavanaugh wrote.
Though, alternative tariff authorities cannot replicate the broad power Trump wielded to impose immediate tariffs using the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, economists said.
“Unlike IEEPA, which allowed the president to impose the tariffs pretty much unilaterally with an executive order, the others would require some amount of findings from executive agencies and processes before the tariffs were imposed,” said Judge Glock, a senior fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute.
The president has already invoked Section 232 of the 1962 Trade Expansion Act to levy a 50% tariff on steel, aluminum and copper imports. Section 232 allows the president to impose tariffs on specific goods due to national security concerns, after the completion of monthslong investigations by the Department of Commerce.
“The administration was expecting this decision to come out and strike down the 1977 IEEPA tariffs, so they’ve already begun some 232 national security investigations,” said Ryan Young, a senior economist at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
But Section 232 limits the president to specific imported goods, rather than allowing the sweeping duties on countries that have become crucial to Trump’s trade negotiation tactics. The Trump administration currently has open investigations into semiconductors, pharmaceuticals, critical minerals, and timber and lumber, among other goods.
“There’s little to no national security justification for any of these,” Young added.
Another option Trump has on the table is invoking Section 338 of the 1930 Tariff Act, which allows the president to impose new or additional duties on countries that have discriminated against U.S. commerce.
Whether discrimination took place must be determined by the U.S. International Trade Commission, composed of six commissioners appointed by the president. The Commission currently has three commissioners, including two Democrats.
Author
Contributor
