The Supreme Court just ruled that President Donald Trump’s broad, emergency- based tariffs were illegal and struck most of them down in a 6–3 decision.

What exactly did the Court decide?

  • The Court held that Trump exceeded the authority Congress gave him under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) when he imposed sweeping “global” or “reciprocal” tariffs on imports from nearly all major trading partners.
  • The majority said IEEPA lets presidents regulate certain economic transactions in genuine emergencies, but it does not clearly authorize open‑ended tariffs “on imports from any country, of any product, at any rate, for any amount of time.”
  • By reading IEEPA that broadly, the president would gain essentially unbounded tariff power, sidestepping the more specific tariff laws that Congress wrote with tighter limits and procedures.

The vote and who wrote the opinion

  • The ruling was 6–3. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion.
  • Roberts was joined by the three liberal justices as well as Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch, both Trump appointees.
  • Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Brett Kavanaugh dissented, arguing the president had more room under existing statutes.

What tariffs were affected?

  • The case targeted Trump’s broad “Liberation Day” and “reciprocal” tariffs, which had slapped steep duties on imports from China, Mexico, Canada, and many other partners, sometimes up to roughly 145% on Chinese goods by 2025.
  • In practical terms, the Court struck down the IEEPA‑based mechanism Trump used to impose these sweeping, across‑the‑board tariffs.
  • The decision does not eliminate all presidential tariff tools: the opinion notes that other statutes still allow narrower or time‑limited tariffs, such as Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 (short‑term emergency tariffs up to 15% for 150 days) and Section 338 of the 1930 Tariff Act (retaliatory tariffs on discriminatory countries).

What happens to the money already collected?

  • The Court explicitly left unresolved what happens to more than 100 billion dollars in tariffs already collected under these now‑invalidated measures.
  • Business groups and states that sued are framing the ruling as a major victory and are already eyeing the possibility of large refund claims.
  • At the same time, officials expect a messy, drawn‑out legal and administrative fight over who gets reimbursed and how any refund system would work.

How did Trump respond and what comes next?

  • Within hours, Trump denounced the ruling as “terrible” and criticized the justices who opposed his policy, calling them “fools.”
  • He moved to roll out a new, flat 10% global tariff structured under different legal authority, aiming to replace those the Court struck down and to keep tariffs central to his economic agenda.
  • The White House signaled it will lean more heavily on the remaining trade statutes to design new tariffs that can survive judicial review, while continuing to argue that tariffs are critical to U.S. manufacturing and leverage in trade negotiations.

Why this ruling matters

  • The decision is one of the most important checks on presidential economic power in decades, sharply limiting how far a president can stretch “emergency” authorities to reshape trade policy without Congress.
  • It reinforces the idea that Congress , not the president, controls the tariff power unless statutes clearly and specifically say otherwise, echoing modern “major questions” and non‑delegation concerns about agencies and the executive taking on huge policy questions without explicit authorization.
  • For global markets, the ruling injects short‑term uncertainty (because existing tariff regimes must change and refunds are unclear) but could, over time, make U.S. trade policy more predictable by forcing big tariff shifts back through Congress.

TL;DR: The Supreme Court ruled 6–3 that Trump’s sweeping, IEEPA‑based tariffs were illegal because Congress never clearly gave the president such vast tariff power, striking them down while leaving narrower tariff tools and the huge refund question for future fights.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.