The president warned that any ruling against him could ‘shatter’ the ‘financial fabric of our country,’ portraying the stakes as nothing less than catastrophic.
Donald Trump has shaken the global economy, slapping steep tariffs on both allies and rivals, brushing off warnings of rising prices, and pledging that his approach will usher in a new "golden age." Now, the only hurdle left is for the president to prove he has the authority to carry it out.
Legal experts warn that he could be facing a formidable uphill battle.
In May, the US Court of International Trade ruled that the majority of Trump’s tariffs “exceed any authority granted to the president.” Then, last Friday, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit found that his levies “assert an expansive authority that is beyond the express limitations” of the law his administration has relied upon.
Now, Trump is escalating the case to the Supreme Court, insisting that any ruling against him would "destroy" the United States.
The appeals court has temporarily paused its ruling, keeping the tariffs in place until October 14. The administration is urging the Supreme Court to act quickly: Solicitor General D. John Sauer has asked the justices to decide by Wednesday, September 10, whether to take up the case. He indicated that oral arguments could be scheduled for the first week of November.
In a filing this week, Sauer argued that the appeals court’s 'erroneous' ruling had “disrupted highly impactful sensitive ongoing diplomatic trade negotiations and cast pall of legal uncertainty over the President’s efforts to protect our country by preventing an unprecedented economic and foreign policy crisis”.
It paves the way for the most consequential legal challenge yet to Trump’s controversial overhaul of US trade policy, which has raised tariffs on foreign goods to levels not seen in nearly a century.
Mark Graber, a prominent constitutional law and politics scholar at the University of Maryland, predicts that the administration is likely to lose the case. “This is an issue that really splits the Trump coalition,” he said. “If it splits the Trump coalition, it probably splits the Trump coalition on the bench.”
The US Supreme Court is dominated by conservative justices, with six of the nine appointed by Republican presidents, including three by Trump. This conservative supermajority has delivered 18 consecutive victories for the administration’s emergency requests—and drawn sharp criticism from liberal-leaning Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who warned it threatens the core principle that America is a "government of laws, not of men."
“It won’t surprise me if a number of Republicans on the supreme bench actually jump on this one,” continued Graber, who believes four of the court’s conservative voices could be persuaded to vote against the tariffs, perhaps in part to counter the narrative that the court has been hijacked by the right. “I don’t think the [John] Roberts, [Amy Coney] Barrett, [Brett] Kavanaugh people are really very thrilled about tariffs. Probably not [Neil] Gorsuch, either.
“I think this court would love to have a case where it doesn’t side with the administration,” he said. “This strikes me as a perfect case” to counter the perception that the supreme court is stacked with “stooges for Trump”.
At the center of the case is the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), the federal law invoked by Trump. The administration has pointed to the influx of fentanyl into the US and the country’s trade deficits—where imports exceed exports—as justification for declaring an emergency.
The term "tariff" is notably absent from the law, fueling doubts over whether it actually grants the president the authority he claims.
The IEEPA “bestows significant authority on the president to undertake a number of actions in response to a declared national emergency”, the appeals court majority wrote, “but none of these actions explicitly include the power to impose tariffs, duties, or the like, or the power to tax”.
While Congress has long delegated the authority to impose or adjust tariffs, it has typically done so in clear, explicit terms. The IEEPA, however, allows presidents to "regulate importation," and Trump’s allies contend that this language grants sweeping powers—including the ability to impose tariffs.
Jonathan Adler, a professor at William & Mary Law School, wrote in the Wall Street Journal that the Supreme Court could be persuaded by this reasoning: "The whole point of enacting statutes like IEEPA is to give the president broad authority to address emergencies when they arise."
Presidential powers tend to be at their strongest on foreign policy and national security, Adler noted, adding: “While IEEPA provides that such actions may ‘only be exercised’ to address such declared emergencies ‘and may not be exercised for any other purpose’, courts have rarely felt competent to second-guess the executive branch’s national-security determinations.”
If the Supreme Court ultimately rules in Trump’s favor, it could empower the administration to push forward with its bold economic agenda. Conversely, should the justices declare his tariffs illegal, the president has warned that the “financial fabric of our country” could be at stake.
Despite these dire warnings, some observers question whether Trump’s fiery rhetoric on tariffs truly mirrors his intentions. “We normally think people litigate to win. But in fact, quite frequently people litigate to lose,” said Graber of the University of Maryland. “The point was publicity.”
Trump “will not mind a loss” in this case, claimed Graber. “One of the virtues Trump gets by litigating this loser of a case is he can tell everybody: ‘I fought for tariffs, I fought for you, it’s just those elitist judges who stopped me,’” he said. “He gets credit for the tariffs, and he doesn’t get the fallout that tariffs would actually create, because they’re declared illegal.”
Regardless of the outcome, the wheels of justice move slowly. A Supreme Court ruling could be months away, and in the meantime, Trump’s tariffs continue to take effect.
The administration contends that higher tariffs are bolstering the world’s largest economy, prompting other nations to rush into trade agreements with the US Yet early signs of strain are emerging, and the deals that have been struck so far offer limited impact.
In a report released this week, Michael Negron of the Center for American Progress, a prominent liberal think tank, contended that Trump’s “irrational, unpredictable” approach to policymaking has imposed a “turbulence tax” on U.S. consumers and businesses.
“It’s just something that everybody’s paying,” Negron, an economic adviser in the Biden White House, said. “At the root of it is this unstable, unpredictable way in which he does his business.”
He added: “If he had said at the beginning of this process, ‘I am setting a 15% tariff … you can take that to the bank’, and he wasn’t changing the policy every couple of weeks, and he wasn’t issuing new threats, and he wasn’t announcing deals that when you look into them aren’t actually significant – just one, flat number – I think that would have been received much better, and would have proven less costly, than the ups and downs, and the ups and downs, and the ups and downs.”
For small-business owners grappling with the rising cost of imports, or shoppers staring at ever-growing grocery bills, the uncertainty of what comes next is palpable.
One thing is certain: regardless of how this case is resolved, the economic turbulence is unlikely to ease.
