The U.S. Supreme Court granted an unusually quick hearing on President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs Tuesday, putting a policy at the centre of his economic agenda squarely before the nation’s highest court.
The justices will hear the case in November — a lightning-fast timetable by the court’s standards — and rule sometime after. The tariffs will remain in place in the meantime.
The court agreed to take up an appeal from the Trump administration after lower courts found most of his tariffs illegal.
The small businesses and states that challenged them also agreed to the accelerated timetable. They say Trump’s import taxes on goods from almost every country have nearly driven their businesses to bankruptcy. “Congress, not the President alone, has the power to impose tariffs,” attorney Jeffrey Schwab with the Liberty Justice Center said.
Two lower courts agreed Trump didn’t have the power to impose all the tariffs under an emergency powers law, though a divided appeals court left them in place.
The Trump administration asked the justices to intervene quickly, arguing the law gives him the power to regulate imports and striking down the tariffs would put the country on “the brink of economic catastrophe.”
The case will come before a court reluctant to check Trump’s extraordinary flex of executive power. One key question is whether the justices’ own expansive view of presidential authority allows for Trump’s tariffs without the explicit approval of Congress, which the Constitution endows with the power to levy tariffs. Three of the justices on the conservative-majority court were nominated by Trump in his first term.
While the tariffs and their erratic rollout have raised fears of higher prices and slower economic growth, Trump has also used them to pressure other countries into accepting new trade deals. Revenue from tariffs totalled US$159 billion by late August, more than double what it was a year earlier.
Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued lower court rulings are already affecting those negotiations. If the tariffs are struck down, the U.S. Treasury may have to refund some of the import taxes it collected, administration officials said. A ruling against them could even threaten the nation’s ability to reduce the flow of fentanyl and efforts to end Russia’s war against Ukraine, Sauer argued.
The administration did win over four appeals court judges who found the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA, lets the president regulate imports during emergencies without explicit limits. In recent decades, Congress has ceded some tariff authority to the president, and Trump has made the most of the power vacuum.
The case involves two sets of import taxes, both justified by Trump declaring a national emergency: the tariffs first announced in April and those from February on imports from Canada, China and Mexico.
It does not include his levies on foreign steel, aluminum and autos, or the tariffs Trump imposed on China in his first term that were kept by Democratic President Joe Biden.
Trump can impose tariffs under other laws, but those have more restrictions on the speed and severity with which he could act.