In WLF Victory, Supreme Court Strikes Down Presidential Tariffs

“The President claimed the power to impose, reduce, hike, suspend, double, treble, or eliminate tariffs all on his own. No law allows that—least of all the Constitution.”
—Zac Morgan, WLF Senior Litigation Counsel

(Washington, DC)—Today in Learning Resources v. Trump/V.O.S. v. Trump the U.S. Supreme Court struck down tariffs imposed by President Trump. The Court’s decision was a victory for WLF, whose amicus brief argued that the President’s asserted legal authority was specious at best. The Court agreed, rejecting the President’s claim that “[b]ased on two words separated by 16 others” in a sanctions law, he possessed “power to impose tariffs on imports from any country, of any product, at any rate, for any amount of time.”

The case arises from a series of executive orders that claim the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) as a legal basis for the President to impose tariffs. Those orders were challenged by a host of plaintiffs across the United States. In one case, the toy manufacturer Learning Resources prevailed before the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, which held that IEEPA does not authorize the President to impose tariffs. In September, the Supreme Court granted review of that case, along with another tariff challenge from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (V.O.S. v. Trump). The Court consolidated the cases and heard them on an expedited basis.

As WLF’s amicus brief explained, the President has no inherent constitutional authority to impose tariffs, and so he must rely on Congressional authorization to do so. But IEEPA, a nearly 50-year-old statute that no other President has used to justify tariffs, never mentions tariffs. The President’s strained reading to the contrary is of a piece with earlier Executive Branch overreaches halted by the Supreme Court, such as President Biden’s effort to cancel student loan debt and President Obama’s effort to create a carbon cap-and-trade program through the EPA. As WLF’s brief correctly contended, it is highly unlikely “that Congress, well-aware of the importance of regulatory and taxation certainty to America’s business community, would have given the President unbridled whipsaw authority on such a major question.”