Trump warns Supreme Court tariff ruling will cost US trillions

The Supreme Court just told the president he can’t tax imports by executive fiat. Donald Trump is not taking it well. In a 6-3 ruling handed down on February 20, 2026, the Court determined that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act does not grant the president authority to impose tariffs, classifying such levies as a form of taxation that belongs squarely in Congress’s domain. Trump responded by warning the decision would cost the United States trillions of dollars, a figure rooted in administration projections that the tariffs would have generated between $1.4 trillion and $1.5 trillion over the next decade. What the Court actually said Chief Justice John Roberts authored the majority opinion, joined by an unusual coalition: Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, Gorsuch, Barrett, and Jackson. Roberts wrote that IEEPA, a 1977 law designed to let the president freeze assets and block transactions during national emergencies, was never intended as a backdoor to trade policy. Trump’s tariffs, rolled out in 2025, were framed as responses to a collection of national security threats, from the trade deficit to fentanyl trafficking across borders. The administration argued that IEEPA’s bro...