President Donald Trump said on Saturday he is raising a 10% global tariff imposed on Friday to 15%.
The Supreme Court ruled Friday that the provision Trump used to levy his “Liberation Day” tariffs last year, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, could not be used as a vehicle to enact tariffs. In reaction to his IEEPA tariffs being tossed out, the president slapped a new 10% tariff on the world by using a different provision, Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974.
Hours later, Trump said he was hiking the 10% tariff still higher, to 15%.
SALENA ZITO: TRUMP LIVES UP TO HIS PROMISE TO EAST PALESTINE
“During the next short number of months, the Trump Administration will determine and issue the new and legally permissible Tariffs, which will continue our extraordinarily successful process of Making America Great Again – GREATER THAN EVER BEFORE!!!” the president wrote in a Saturday morning post to Truth Social.
The president continued to blast the Supreme Court for issuing what he described as a “ridiculous, poorly written, and extraordinarily anti-American decision.” Trump’s statement came after he had previously suggested that “afraid” justices felt pressured into making the ruling due to influence campaigns from “foreign interests,” particularly China.
“I think that foreign interests are represented by people that I believe have undue influence. They have a lot of influence over the Supreme Court, whether it’s through fear or respect or friendships,” he said during a press conference reacting to the court’s decision ruling that the IEEPA could not be used to institute sweeping tariffs. “I don’t like them. I think they’re real slime balls. We’ve got to do what’s right for the country. You’ve got to do what’s right for the Constitution.”
The court’s 6-3 decision split the conservative faction down the middle, with Trump-appointed Associate Justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett joining the majority. Chief Justice John Roberts, appointed by President George W. Bush, wrote the majority opinion arguing that the IEEPA does not grant the chief executive sweeping power to execute tariff policy.
“For those who think it important for the Nation to impose more tariffs, I understand that today’s decision will be disappointing,” Gorsuch wrote in his concurrence. “All I can offer them is that most major decisions affecting the rights and responsibilities of the American people (including the duty to pay taxes and tariffs) are funneled through the legislative process for a reason.”
Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh disagreed, arguing that the IEEPA’s broad grant of power to the executive branch to regulate imports includes the power to impose tariffs. He also contended in his dissent that there are “numerous other federal statutes [that] authorize the President to impose tariffs and might justify most (if not all) of the tariffs at issue in this case.”
“The sole legal question here is whether, under IEEPA, tariffs are a means to ‘regulate…importation.’ Statutory text, history, and precedent demonstrate that the answer is clearly yes: Like quotas and embargoes, tariffs are a traditional and common tool to regulate importation,” he wrote.
