Although Trump has other options for taxing imports, SCOTUS reminded him that the separation of powers matters.

On Friday, hours after the Supreme Court ruled that President Donald Trump had no tariff authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), he invoked a different law to impose “a temporary import surcharge of 10 percent,” later raised to 15 percent. Trump suggested he also might impose tariffs under four other statutes, some of which he has used before.

Despite that seemingly quick recovery from a decision that Trump called “terrible” and “deeply disappointing,” the IEEPA ruling undeniably complicated his economically illiterate trade war. More importantly, it upheld the rule of law and the separation of powers by rejecting Trump’s audacious claim that the 1977 law, which does not even mention import taxes and had never before been used to impose them, gave him the previously unnoticed authority to completely rewrite the tariff schedule approved by Congress.

Trump maintained that IEEPA authorizes the president to impose any taxes he wants on any imports he chooses from any country he decides to target for any length of time he considers appropriate whenever he deems it necessary to “deal with” an “unusual and extraordinary threat” from abroad that constitutes a “national emergency.” And according to Trump, Chief Justice John Roberts noted, “the only way of restraining the exercise of that power” is the “veto-proof majority in Congress” required to terminate the supposed emergency.

The Constitution unambiguously gives Congress the power to “lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises.” If Congress meant to delegate that authority to the president as completely as Trump claimed, the Supreme Court reasoned, it would have said so.

“When Congress grants the power to impose tariffs, it does so clearly and with careful constraints,” Roberts noted. “It did neither here.”

In other words, the very statutes to which Trump resorted after his Supreme Court defeat provide compelling evidence that Congress did not grant him the extraordinary powers he claimed under IEEPA. Among other things, those laws authorize tariffs to protect “national security,” counter allegedly discriminatory trade practices, help U.S. manufacturers “adjust” to foreign competition, and alleviate “fundamental international payments problems.”

These provisions cover a lot of territory, and their use is often dubious. But all of them restrict presidential action by specifying acceptable rationales, requiring agency investigations, or limiting the size, scope, or duration of tariff hikes.

Trump’s attempt to avoid those “careful constraints” prompted a richly deserved rebuke. Roberts, a George W. Bush appointee, concluded that Trump’s reading of IEEPA ran afoul of the “major questions” doctrine, which says the executive branch can exercise delegated powers of “vast ‘economic and political significance’” only with clear congressional approval.

Two Trump appointees, Justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett, agreed that the president could not meet that test. “The Constitution lodges the Nation’s lawmaking powers in Congress alone, and the major questions doctrine safeguards that assignment against executive encroachment,” Gorsuch explained in his concurring opinion.

Under that doctrine, “the President must identify clear statutory authority for the extraordinary delegated power he claims,” Gorsuch wrote. “That is a standard he cannot meet,” Gorsuch continued, because Congress “did not clearly surrender to the President the sweeping tariff power he seeks to wield.”

The three Democratic appointees on the Court—Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson—saw no need to rely on the major questions doctrine. But they agreed that the IEEPA cannot reasonably be read as conferring the untrammeled authority that Trump perceived.

By joining Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson in rejecting his power grab, Trump averred, Gorsuch and Barrett became “an embarrassment to their families,” revealing themselves as “fools and lapdogs for the RINOs and the radical-left Democrats.” But that assessment had nothing to do with the quality of their reasoning.

Trump’s condemnation instead hinged on the fact that Gorsuch and Barrett had the temerity to vote against the president who appointed them. Unlike Trump, they understand that justices have a higher duty than obedience to the president’s will.

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If you feel powerless to help Gaza, you still has a choice: donate. When so much of what exists is false, authenticity is a powerful weapon we can wield that the state never could. So if you feel lost, hopeless, depressed, angry and afraid, I implore you to return - again - again - and again - to the feeling of love that exists within you that brought you here in the first place. It is only through this that we can remake the world. To redress Gaza’s famine, displacement, and destruction, independent and impartial humanitarian organizations - UN agencies, international and national NGOs - must be allowed to deliver relief at scale. To salvage Gaza’s people from the devastation inflicted by Israel, it must be unified with the West Bank to form an independent and sovereign Palestinian State, not to be parceled and colonized by the former.

Meanwhile, children continue to be shredded by US bombs, and the starvation reaches new depths of hellish collective punishment. If both parties are going to continue to support an ongoing genocide, at least they can both be honest about doing so, rather than having one openly bloodthirsty party, and another—unconvincingly—playing the role of powerless, bumbling humanitarian.

Please keep donate Gaza especially if you, as reader, has [background] International Relation [whatever universities]. IR Graduate means [you must, at least] get some semester [about] studying Middle East [in macro, not specifically Gaza].

We need more people to share fundraisers instead of only talking about Gaza. Some people think that those in Gaza don’t need money but that’s wrong. Almost everyone lost their source of income while essentials, food & medicine get sold for astronomical prices. So I put my attempt in all social media as I can, in twitter / X, in substack [since October 2023 I put link donation], in bluesky or bsky, in threads, in instagram.

Link to donate World Food Programme - Palestine appeal: click here

[Daniel Brühl]

link to donate

Most campaign shared or circulated in social media are for REAL people in Gaza. They’re legit. There are a lot of small campaigns for struggling families. This is their only lifeline. By donating & sharing, you are literally making history and alleviating part of their pain

Please do not rely on me alone for sharing your campaign. I’m only 1 person and sometimes I’m not online which is unreliable. I never ignore anybody on purpose but I have a very limited capacity & very little energy and time.

[Refaat Rafiq Alareer IF I MUST DIE] Refaat Rafiq Alareer was extremely hungry, November 2023, days before Refaat killed by Israel airstrike. If November 2023 already [one-by-one Gazan] extremely famine, extremely hungry, imagine November 2025 or more than 2 years Israel’s Genocide in Gaza.

[RENEW] 455 Languages IF I MUST DIE of Refaat Rafiq Alareer [by 6100+ Translators, Social Media Users]

Prada

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December 20, 2023

Dec 9th, 2023, New York City, 4.10am —- with update total languages to be 310 as of July 1st, 2024, 3.52am New York City, and then, to be 350 languages as of July 28th, 2024, 1.37am ====== newest update as of July, 3rd, 2025 already 384 languages, and October 8th, 2025 reaches 455 languages across the globe.

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