Saturday, February 21, 2026

Chump's rebuke from the Supreme Court

For any who missed it, the Supreme Court issued a ruling Friday clarifying that only Congress has the power over tariffs -- like the Constitution says. Josh Marshall (TPM) points out, "We say the Court 'struck down' these tariffs. But that wording is inadequate and misleading. These tariffs were always transparently illegal. Saying the actions were 'struck down' suggests at least a notional logic which the Court disagreed with, or perhaps one form of standing practice and constitutional understanding away from which the Court decided to chart another course. Neither is remotely the case. There's no ambiguity in the law in question. Trump assumed a unilateral power to 'find' a national emergency and then used this (transparently fraudulent) national emergency to exercise powers the law in question doesn’t even delegate."  Matthew Chapman (RAW STORY) notes, "President Donald Trump was dealt a huge blow by the Supreme Court on Friday as they eliminated his ability to impose tariffs under economic emergency powers — but he almost at once declared he will continue to charge global tariffs, using a number of alternative statutes. During his rant, he claimed under the ruling, he can't charge tariffs to foreign countries but can 'destroy the country' by cutting off all trade to it instead."  


What does this mean?


In the immediate term, Edith Olmsted (THE NEW REPUBLIC) notes Chump's empty promises are revealed and exposed as empty, "Promises to fund sweeping tax cuts, bridge payments to farmers, deficit reduction, and phony $2,000 rebate checks all went up in smoke—because they weren’t his promises to make." In the long term?  Greg Sargent (TNR) points out, "The loss before the high court is also another sign that the pillars of Trump’s right-wing nationalist agenda are crumbling in a much broader and deeper sense—so much so that it’s posing a serious threat to the long-term durability of the ideology known as Trumpism."  At THE NEW YORK TIMES, Ana Swanson also covers Chump:

 

The Supreme Court may have ruled 6-3 against President Trump’s use of an international emergency law to impose tariffs. But Mr. Trump seems intent on continuing the experiment he has run with the U.S. economy over the past year, in which he has raised tariffs to levels not seen since the 1930s.

In a news conference at the White House on Friday, Mr. Trump made a series of false claims about the economic impact of tariffs and he promised to replace, or even increase, them using laws other than the one the court rejected.

“It’s ridiculous but it’s OK. Because we have other ways, numerous other ways,” the president said. “The numbers can be far greater than the hundreds of billions we’ve already taken in.”

“We broke every record in the book, and we are continuing to do so,” the president said about his tariffs.

By the end of Friday, he said he would impose a new set of levies, including a 10 percent across-the-board tariff. Then on Saturday, Mr. Trump suddenly raised the tariffs to 15 percent, the limit allowed by the new legal provision he was using. “During the next short number of months, the Trump Administration will determine and issue the new and legally permissible Tariffs,” he said in a post on Truth Social.

To the president, tariffs are the antidote to globalization, a way to force more manufacturing back to the United States, reduce America’s reliance on foreign products and lower the trade deficit. But the economic evidence so far has not been in his favor. Instead of shifting manufacturing back into the United States, Mr. Trump’s tariffs mostly appear to have reshuffled trade, at great cost to U.S. companies.

Just the day before the Supreme Court issued its ruling, the government reported annual trade data for last year, including several metrics that controverted Mr. Trump’s claims. The data showed that the trade deficit — the gap between what America imports from other countries and what it exports — continued to widen in December, and that the annual trade deficit in goods last year hit a record high.  


The verdict was a huge defeat for Chump.  How the justices got there?  Matt Ford (THE NEW REPUBLIC) observes:


The Supreme Court delivered a crushing blow to President Donald Trump’s policy agenda on Friday, ruling that a Cold War–era law for economic emergencies does not give the executive branch a blank check to impose trillions of dollars in tariffs without congressional approval.

Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for himself and five other justices, held that Trump had exceeded his powers under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977, also known as IEEPA. “The President asserts the extraordinary power to unilaterally impose tariffs of unlimited amount, duration, and scope,” Roberts concluded. “In light of the breadth, history, and constitutional context of that asserted authority, he must identify clear congressional authorization to exercise it.”

The six-justice majority brought together the court’s three liberal members and three of their conservative colleagues: Roberts and Justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett. But while they agreed on the outcome, they differed widely on the reasoning that led them there.

Justice Elena Kagan, writing for the liberals, argued that Trump’s invocation of IEEPA failed under the “ordinary rules of statutory interpretation.”

“Usual text-in-context interpretation dooms the tariffs the President has imposed,” she explained. “The crucial provision of IEEPA, when viewed in light of the broader statutory scheme and with a practical awareness of how Congress delegates tariff authority, does not give the President the power he wants.”

Roberts, on the other hand, argued alongside the other two conservatives that the tariffs were invalid under the “major questions doctrine.” Under that doctrine, the executive branch cannot invoke congressionally delegated powers in novel ways on matters of “vast economic and political significance” unless the courts decide that Congress has “spoken clearly” enough to authorize it.


Robert Kuttner offers his take at THE AMERICAN PROSPECT:

The ruling is a sharp rejection of one of the president’s primary policy tools, but it was telegraphed enough that the administration has some possible contingencies in place. Under a different authority, tariffs of 15 percent can be imposed to deal with trade deficits for 150 days. In that time, the administration can impose Section 301 and Section 232 investigations to extend tariffs on select goods or against select countries further. But Trump would have to justify these with data. And the days of unilaterally announcing tariffs that take immediate effect are dead and buried.

The president does have somewhat more open-ended general authority to impose tariffs against countries that discriminate against U.S. exports, but to invoke that now would be a poke in the eye of the Supreme Court and would invite more litigation.

The bigger problem for Trump is the thousands of companies that will ask for refunds from the tariffs imposed under IEEPA. That will be a huge mess, and the Supreme Court offered no guidance on how to proceed with it.

With the unilateral tariff regime over, we can assess its value, and there really wasn’t any. Yesterday, the latest U.S. trade deficit numbers came in well above expectations. The merchandise trade deficit hit a record $1.2 trillion in 2025, according to Thursday’s Commerce Department report.

Basically, imports of Chinese goods fell by nearly 30 percent, but imports from other nations more than made up the difference. The deficit in manufacturing was especially severe, as U.S. production jobs fell by 88,000 in 2025.

So despite constant pronouncements of tariffs allegedly designed to boost domestic production, create jobs, and lower the trade deficit, the entire effort amounted to nothing.

Some questions remain.  Some are wondering about companies that paid tariffs -- will they be able to seek refunds?  Josh Marshall (TALKING POINTS MEMO) notes:

Almost every article on today’s tariff decision includes, somewhere two or three paragraphs down, a note which explains that it’s unclear how or whether the federal government will issue refunds for illegally collected tariffs. The Court’s decision doesn’t address this. I’m not sure why it would really need to address this. The tariffs were illegal. The government had no legal authority to collect them. So it should be a simple matter for importers to go to court and compel the government to refund their money. But set all that aside. Is it really so uncertain? I’ll bet the White House is going to find a way to issue those refunds. Why? Because Trump insiders, especially the family of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, have reportedly made huge, huge bets on the tariffs being tossed. They and their clients now, per a July report that prompted a Senate investigation, stand to make tens or even hundreds of billions on those refunds. Given that Lutnick is a primary player in White House tariff policy, I’m pretty confident that they’re going to find a way to issue those refunds.

How does this work? I discussed this in a post from Sept. 1 of last year. The gist is this: When he became commerce secretary, Lutnick gifted his sons his Wall Street firm Cantor Fitzgerald. (In the link above I explained how they structured this handoff — which as a bonus allowed Lutnick to pay zero capital gains on the entire transaction.) Twenty-something failson Brandon Lutnick is now chairman of the firm. Brother Kyle, apparently another business prodigy from the same family, is vice chairman. Soon after Trump’s tariffs were announced last fall, Brandon Lutnick — no doubt in a totally, totally arms-length way — started buying up the rights to tariff refunds at about 25% of their sticker value.

I base this on reports of these trades from last summer; Wired broke the story in July. A day after the original publication of that article, Wired updated the story with a less-than-denial denial from Cantor Fitzgerald. Erica Chase, a spokesperson for Cantor, said: “Cantor is not in the business of positioning any risk or taking views in litigation claims including tariffs.”

Of course, the true tax paid was paid by the American people.  At The Tax Foundation, Erica York and  Alex Durante offer:


  • President Trump has imposed International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) tariffs on US trading partners, including China, Canada, Mexico, and the EU. In addition, he has threatened and imposed Section 232 tariffs on autos, heavy trucks, steel, aluminum, lumber, furniture, semiconductors, pharmaceuticals, and copper, among others.
  • On February 20, 2026, the Supreme Court ruled in a 6-3 decision in Learning Resources Inc. v. Trump and V.O.S. Selections v. United States that “IEEPA does not authorize the President to impose tariffs.”  
  • The Trump tariffs amounted to an average tax increase per US household of $1,000 in 2025. We estimate with the IEEPA tariffs being ruled illegal, the President’s remaining new tariffs under Section 232 amount to average tax increase per US household of $400 in 2026.
  • The average effective tariff rate in 2025 was 7.7 percent, this highest rate since 1947. We estimate with the IEEPA tariffs being ruled illegal, the remaining Section 232 tariffs imposed in 2025 increase the weighted average applied tariff rate on all imports to 6.7 percent in 2026, and the average effective tariff rate, reflecting behavioral responses, rises to 4.5 percent—the highest since 1973.
  • With the IEEPA being ruled illegal, we estimate that the remaining Section 232 tariffs imposed in 2025 will raise $635 billion in revenue from 2026-2035 on a conventional basis and reduce US GDP by 0.2 percent, all before foreign retaliation. Accounting for negative economic effects, the revenue raised by the tariffs falls to $490 billion over the next decade. We estimate that the Section 232 tariffs raised $36 billion in net tax revenue in 2025.
  • The tariffs have not meaningfully altered the trade balance. The total trade deficit fell by only $2.1 billion in 2025, driven by an increase in the trade surplus of services.
  • Historical evidence and recent studies show that tariffs are taxes that raise prices and reduce available quantities of goods and services for US businesses and consumers, resulting in lower income, reduced employment, and lower economic output.

 A $1,000 increase per US household in 2025.  How is that going to be made right for the American people?   Sharon Zhang  (TRUTHOUT) notes:


Up until the ruling, Trump’s tariff policies generated an estimated $195 billion for the government. Researchers have estimated that 90 percent of the extra costs will fall on consumers, and Yale University researchers have said that previous tariff policies have led to 100 percent of costs to companies to be passed onto consumers.

Analyses show that the tariffs would have cost American households roughly $1,000 to $2,000 over the course of a year. This burden would have come on top of skyrocketing inequality, as landlords impose unaffordable rents, federal subsidies for health care disappear, and corporations cut tens of thousands of jobs (instead of CEO pay) in response to cost increases.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom called on the Trump administration to “immediately issue refund checks — with interest” to Americans and businesses.

“Time to pay the piper, Donald. These tariffs were nothing more than an illegal cash grab that drove up prices and hurt working families, so you could wreck longstanding alliances and extort them,” Newsom said in a statement. 


Senator Patty Murray's office issued the following yesterday:


Senator Murray has been outspoken about the harm Trump’s tariffs are causing in WA—one of the most trade-dependent states in the country; Murray has held numerous events in every corner of the state to hear from businesses, farmers, and border communities about effects of Trump’s trade war

Washington, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) issued the following statement in response to the 6-3 Supreme Court decision ruling against Trump’s use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to unilaterally impose tariffs.

“No doubt the President is somewhere throwing a tantrum over this Supreme Court Decision, but the law is clear and the law won. Small businesses across Washington state are breathing a sigh of relief thanks to this decision. Trump’s erratic tariff regime was nothing short of economic arson. On a whim, the President would upend entire industries and drastically drive up costs or block our small businesses from markets they depended on—it was sheer stupidity that cost us jobs and drove up prices for just about everyone.

“While this decision puts an important leash on an out-of-control White House, we have to recognize that so much damage has already been done. And all year, Republicans blocked Democrats from simply repealing Trump’s destructive tariffs out of pure cowardice and a slovenly deference to a President determined to set our economy on fire. Good riddance.

“Undoubtedly, Trump will look for new ways to impose tariffs and hurt American small businesses—he should just give it up and Republicans should work with us to make sure he does. In Congress, I’ll keep fighting back against Trump and Republicans’ anti-small business, anti-consumer policies—Democrats are fighting for commonsense policies that grow the economy for everyone, support the middle-class, and make life more affordable.”

Washington state has one of the most trade-dependent economies of any state in the country, with 40 percent of jobs in the state tied to international commerce. In 2024, Washington exported $57.8 billion of goods, according to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR), making Washington state the 9th-largest state exporter of goods last year. Washington state is also the top U.S. producer of apples, blueberries, hops, pears, spearmint oil, and sweet cherries—all of which risk losing vital export markets due to retaliatory tariffs from key trading partners including Canada.

###


Chump had a meltdown Friday when he heard the news of the Court's finding.  Chump attacked and cursed out the Court over the verdict.  Does that mean anything?  David McAfee (RAW STORY) offers:


Donald Trump's reaction to the Supreme Court smacking down his signature initiative upset "all nine" justices and will give the conservative high court "more freedom" to defy the president's wishes in upcoming cases, according to a Republican strategist.

Appearing on MS NOW's PoliticsNation this weekend, Republican strategist Susan del Percio, who has a history of working with Republican candidates and in Rudy Giuliani's administration, was asked if Trump's response to the Supreme Court would fly with the nation's highest jurists. Trump said he was ashamed and disappointed with Republicans who ruled against him, and said they lacked courage and loyalty.

Asked, "Will this pass with them?" the GOP insider replied, "I don't think so."


Let's wind down with this from Senator Ron Wyden's office:


Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Ron Wyden said today he has joined Senate colleagues in launching a new investigation into the federal Department of Labor after releasing new data revealing the Trump administration’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) performed 20% fewer inspections and issued 42% fewer fines for severe workplace violations in 2025.

Both figures indicate that the Department of Labor may be discouraging inspectors from enforcing workplace safety laws.

The investigation will examine the department’s broader plans to eliminate key safety regulations, putting U.S. workers at serious risk. The lawmakers pressed for answers regarding the decline in OSHA enforcement actions, and the department’s recent attempts to roll back safety rules — including those that protect workers from leading causes of death on the job.

“Your agency has tried to cloak your deregulatory agenda in the language of ‘putting workers first,’ but the reality is that the Labor Department is prioritizing the interests of unscrupulous employers over Americans who work hard in dangerous environments to provide for their families,” the senators wrote to Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer and Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health David Keeling.

Over the last year, the Trump administration has proposed massive cuts to OSHA’s funding, threatening the agency’s ability to effectively oversee more than 8 million worksites across the country. At the same time, the Department of Labor has rolled out a deregulatory agenda that proposes to get rid of many regulations that keep U.S. workers safe, including:

  1. Eliminating the authority of the Mine Safety and Health Administration —which protects coal miners from hazards like black lung disease— to require mine operators to ensure proper ventilation and prevent roof collapses in mines;
  2. Announcement of plans to eliminate requirements for adequate lighting on construction sites—even though about one of every twenty construction worker deaths are caused by visibility issues, including poor lighting. Construction is the leading sector for worker fatalities;
  3. Announcement of plans to limit OSHA’s ability to hold employers accountable for unsafe working conditions in inherently unsafe professions; and
  4. Loosening of respirator requirements for workers exposed to carcinogens, lead, asbestos, and formaldehyde.

An independent analysis of OSHA enforcement actions during the first nine months of the Trump administration supported the data provided to the office of U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass, finding that the agency brought 35 percent fewer cases than the same period in previous administrations. It also found that OSHA imposed just $94 million in penalties—47% lower compared to the first nine months of the last 17 years.

“If employers know that they are unlikely to face hefty fines, they may be less likely to adhere to safety standards that keep American workers safe in their places of employment,” the lawmakers warned.

The senators requested a response to their questions no later than March 4, 2026, including answers as to whether OSHA has directed inspectors to reduce the number of inspections, citations issued for workplace violations, or reduce citations for a certain type of violation.

The letter was led by Warren. In addition to Wyden, the letter was also signed by U.S. Senators Angela Alsobrooks, D-Md., Tammy Baldwin, D-Ill., Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Alex Padilla, D-Calif.

The full letter is here.

The following sites updated:


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