Article written by Avalon Stewart, Feb 24th 2026
A Tariffic Week
Trump and the Supreme Court on Tariffs
The infamous and surprisingly misunderstood word “Tariffs” has once again become the star of the show in headlines this past week, and there is a lot that needs to be explained to fully understand all that is going on. In a 6-3 opinion on Friday, the justices held that Trump's aggressive approach to tariffs on products entering the United States from across the world was not permitted under the 1977 IEEPA. The ruling invalidates many, but not all, of the tariffs that Trump imposed almost a year ago.
Tierney L. Cross/The New York Times
In the words of Justice Gorsuch, “The President has made a claim that Congress delegated to him an extraordinary power in the IEEPA-the power to impose tariffs on practically any products he wants, from any countries he chooses, in any amounts he selects”, but the thing about that claim from Trump is that he’s simply factually incorrect. Trump is the first president to claim that a 1970s emergency statute, which does not mention the word “tariffs,” allowed him to unilaterally impose the duties without congressional approval.
The question that was presented to the Supreme Court was whether the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) authorizes the President to impose tariffs. But as put by Justice Kagan, “IEEPA gives the President significant authority over transactions involving foreign property, including the importation of goods. But in that generous delegation, one power is conspicuously missing. Nothing in IEEPA’s text, nor anything in its context, enables the President to unilaterally impose tariffs. And needless to say, without statutory authority, the President’s tariffs cannot stand.”
Over the course of President Trump’s second term, the conservative majority of the Supreme Court has sided with the president on key issues in most cases, often without explaining why. It marked a muscular show of independence by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr, who wrote the majority opinion striking down the president’s expansive tariffs. Two of the three conservative justices appointed by Trump during his first term, Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Neil M. Gorsuch joined the chief justice in rejecting the president’s signature economic policy.
The court’s 6-3 decision has significant implications for the U.S. economy, consumers, and the president’s trade policy. The Trump administration had said that a loss at the Supreme Court could force the government to unwind trade deals with other countries and potentially pay hefty refunds to importers. The decision on Friday has left uncertain the extent to which those who paid tariffs might be able to obtain refunds, with Justice Kavanaugh warning that any refund process could be a substantial “mess.”
This all being said, after the court’s ruling, Trump immediately announced that he was relying on a different statute-the Trade Act of 1974-to impose a new, blanket 15% global levy on imports to the U.S. The president initially announced plans to impose a 10% duty on global imports, before saying that the rate would rise “to the fully allowed, and legally tested, 15% level”. Whether or not it’s a surprise to you, these new tariffs are illegal too. The never-used provision the White House is relying on, Section 122, says that the president shall impose tariffs or import restrictions, for up to 150 days, whenever “fundamental international payments problems require” restricting imports to deal with, among other things, “large and serious United States balance-of-payments deficits”. But if you actually read the statute correctly you’d see that it doesn’t line out a provision for “trade” imbalances, it is talking about “financial” imbalances; there is a whole other section that’s dedicated to trade imbalances.
President Donald Trump announced his "Liberation Day" reciprocal tariffs in April 2025. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images / Getty Images)
Finally, with the court’s decision comes a lot of money that needs to be given back to the people that paid the most for the tariffs; that being you, the tax payer. The government is on the hook to refund $134 billion worth of tariff revenue collected from President Donald Trump’s most sweeping tariffs, which were the ones that were rendered illegal by the Supreme Court last week. So, how much will the average consumer get back in return for all of those high prices they paid? Almost certainly nothing. That’s because consumers paid for tariffs indirectly; they’re mostly not the ones making the actual payment to the government.
However, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker has demanded that President Donald Trump repay billions of dollars to the Illinois state residents. In an invoice Pritzker posted to social media, the governor demanded that each of Illinois’ 5.1 million households receive a check for $1,700 to repay them for the tariffs the Trump administration has collected since the levies went into effect. He stated, “On behalf of the people of Illinois, I demand a refund of $1,700 for every family in Illinois. There are 5,105,448 households in my state, bringing the total damages you owe to $8,679,261,600”. When affected parties challenge the new levies in the coming days, the courts should step in and put a halt to the levies. The president has replaced one set of illegal tariffs with another.
Avalon is from Mount Vernon, Washington. She is a Freshman at Whitman College and plans to major in Psychology and Politics. In high school she competed in Speech and Debate all four years and even was state champ in Congressional Debate. She is passionate about politics and the process of delivering news that people can trust.
Lead editor for The Lamplight