The Supreme Court struck down President Trump's global tariffs in a 6-3 ruling, finding that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act did not authorize the sweeping trade measures the administration had imposed. Within hours, the White House had already moved to new ground.
Vice President JD Vance fired back immediately on X:
"Today, the Supreme Court decided that Congress, despite giving the president the ability to 'regulate imports', didn't actually mean it. This is lawlessness from the Court, plain and simple."
President Trump, meanwhile, didn't pause to grieve. He walked into the White House briefing room and announced a new tariff order under entirely different statutory authority, effectively routing around the Court's decision before the ink was dry.
According to Breitbart, the decision marks the first time the high court has definitively struck down one of Trump's second-term policies. Chief Justice John Roberts joined Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, Gorsuch, Barrett, and Jackson in the majority, while Justices Alito, Kavanaugh, and Thomas dissented.
The majority held that Trump went too far in enacting sweeping tariffs without clear authorization from Congress under IEEPA, the 1977 emergency statute the administration had invoked. Trump had used the law to declare overdose deaths from fentanyl and persistent annual trade deficits to be national emergencies, then leveraged those declarations to impose duties in two waves:
All of that now falls. But the story doesn't end there, because the dissent essentially drew the administration a map.
Justice Kavanaugh's dissent may prove more consequential than the majority opinion. While disagreeing with his colleagues, Kavanaugh laid out the alternative statutory framework in remarkable detail:
"Although I firmly disagree with the Court's holding today, 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."
He then listed the statutes by name: the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 (Section 232), the Trade Act of 1974 (Sections 122, 201, and 301), and the Tariff Act of 1930 (Section 338). His conclusion was blunt: the President "checked the wrong statutory box."
That's a dissenting justice telling the executive branch, in a published opinion, exactly which boxes to check next time. The administration was apparently listening.
At the White House briefing, Trump announced the pivot without hesitation:
"Effective immediately, all national security tariffs under Section 232 and existing Section 301 tariffs remain in place — fully in place, and in full force and effect. Today, I will sign an order to impose a ten percent global tariff under Section 122, over and above our normal tariffs already being charged. And, we're also initiating several Section 301 and other investigations to protect our country from unfair trading practices of other countries and companies."
The speed of the response tells you this was not improvisation. The administration had clearly gamed out the possibility of losing the IEEPA case and prepared the fallback. Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 gives the president authority to impose tariffs, and Trump invoked it to reimpose the same 10 percent global tariff rate that the Court had just voided under different statutory clothing.
Vance reinforced the message, noting that Trump has a wide range of other tariff powers and intends to use them to defend American workers and advance the administration's trade priorities. The vice president argued that the only practical effect of the ruling would be to make it harder for the president to protect American industries and supply chain resiliency.
What the Court actually decided, stripped of the political noise, is narrow: IEEPA doesn't authorize tariffs. Congress passed it in 1977 as an emergency powers statute, and the majority concluded that "regulate imports" in that context didn't extend to the kind of comprehensive trade policy the administration was running through it.
Fair enough as a textual matter. But the practical absurdity is hard to miss. Congress has spent decades delegating trade authority to the executive through a patchwork of statutes stretching back to 1930. The president has broad tariff power under multiple laws. The Court didn't say tariffs are unconstitutional or that the president lacks authority to impose them. It said he used the wrong law. That's a procedural speed bump, not a constitutional barrier.
This is why Kavanaugh's dissent reads less like a lament and more like a brief. He essentially told the country that the majority opinion changes the paperwork, not the policy. A few additional procedural steps, and the same tariffs land on the same imports from the same countries.
The more interesting subplot is the majority coalition itself. Gorsuch and Barrett, both Trump appointees, joined the three liberal justices and Chief Justice Roberts. That's not an ideological split so much as an institutional one. The conservative justices who sided with the majority likely did so on separation-of-powers grounds, insisting that Congress must speak clearly when delegating the power to tax imports.
There's a principled conservative argument in that position. Executive overreach is executive overreach regardless of the policy goal. Conservatives who cheered when courts reined in Obama's executive orders on immigration can't be entirely surprised when courts apply similar logic to trade policy. The remedy is the same one it's always been: Congress should legislate clearly, and if it wants the president to have IEEPA tariff authority, it can say so explicitly.
But that remedy requires a Congress willing to act. And on trade, Capitol Hill has been content to let presidents carry the water for decades, preserving deniability while outsourcing the hard decisions. The Court just forced the question back to the legislature. Whether Congress picks it up is another matter entirely.
The immediate landscape is clear. Section 232 and Section 301 tariffs remain untouched. A new 10 percent global tariff is being imposed under Section 122. New trade investigations are being launched. The tariff architecture isn't gone. It's being rebuilt on different foundations.
The legal challenges will follow. They always do. But each of those alternative statutes has decades of precedent behind it, and the Court's own majority opinion didn't question the president's tariff authority under those laws. The administration is now operating on the ground that the judiciary itself is identified as solid.
Vance called the ruling lawlessness. Whether you agree with that characterization or not, the administration's response made one thing unmistakable: the trade agenda isn't waiting for the Court's permission.