The Supreme Court case that could curb Trump’s tariff power
By Michael Jones
Tariffs are invisible taxes that flow through to the prices of groceries, cars, electronics and other everyday goods. They’re also the linchpin of President Donald Trump’s trade policy. But instead of working with Congress to impose these levies against U.S. trading partners, Trump has relied on a series of emergency declarations to take unilateral action so severe that the average household is estimated to add $1,200 to its average annual expenses, according to the Tax Foundation.
Trump’s use of emergency powers to impose global tariffs is the subject of a Supreme Court oral argument on Wednesday on a case that carries sweeping economic and national security implications. The argument follows a series of bipartisan Senate votes last week to rescind Trump’s Canada, Brazil and global “Liberation Day” tariffs in a rare demonstration of one of the Republican-controlled chambers of Congress pushing back against what critics have defined as executive overreach. Beyond the constitutional implications, the case and Senate action capture the stakes of allowing one man to set global trade policy by declaring an open-ended emergency.
“The Supreme Court will decide whether tariffs are even an appropriate tool to be used under IEEPA,” Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), the lawmaker leading the Senate push to repeal the tariffs, told a small group of reporters last week. “But I’m standing strong for the position that we shouldn’t let a president just manufacture emergencies. This whole notion of a president governing by emergency power and trying to bypass everybody else in the system to do so is very dangerous.”
The case the Court will hear—Trump v. V.O.S. Selections—specifically challenges the president’s sweeping use of emergency powers to impose global tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). V.O.S. Selections, a California-based wine importer, sued the administration, arguing that the IEEPA was never meant to give presidents unilateral authority to raise tariffs—a power the Constitution reserves for Congress—and that the policy has inflated consumer prices while disrupting supply chains. The case now before the justices will determine whether Trump exceeded his statutory authority and, more broadly, how much power presidents can wield over trade and taxation without congressional approval.
If the Supreme Court sides with President Trump, it would cement a far broader interpretation of IEEPA—essentially confirming that a president can invoke an ongoing “national emergency” to impose tariffs without new congressional authorization. That outcome would give the executive branch sweeping control over U.S. trade policy and effectively allow future presidents to raise or lower import prices at will.
A ruling against Trump, by contrast, would rein in decades of growing emergency authority, reaffirm Congress’s constitutional role in setting tariffs and taxes and could invalidate billions of dollars in duties already collected. The justices could also take a narrower path—upholding Trump’s tariffs on technical grounds while warning that IEEPA has limits—and leave the door open for Congress to revisit the law.
IEEPA was enacted in 1977 to give presidents limited authority to regulate commerce during a declared national emergency involving an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to the United States that originates abroad. The law allows the president to block transactions, freeze foreign assets and restrict trade with hostile nations, but it was never intended as a blanket power to raise tariffs or reshape U.S. trade policy. Over time, presidents of both parties have used IEEPA to impose targeted sanctions or respond to crises such as terrorism, cyberattacks, and foreign interference. Critics like Kaine now argue that President Trump’s use of the law to justify sweeping global tariffs goes far beyond what Congress envisioned, turning an emergency tool into a mechanism for unilateral taxation and trade policy.
Since its passage, presidents have invoked the IEEPA more than 70 times, typically to address targeted national security threats rather than broad economic policy. Former President Jimmy Carter first used it in 1979 to freeze Iranian assets during the hostage crisis. Former President George W. Bush relied on it after the September 11 attacks to cut off terrorist financing networks, while former President Barack Obama used it to sanction Russian and North Korean entities involved in cyberattacks and nuclear proliferation.
In each instance, the measures were narrow, temporary and designed to address specific threats from foreign actors. President Trump’s sweeping application of IEEPA to impose tariffs on friendly nations and major trading partners marks a dramatic expansion of that authority. It has raised questions about whether a law intended for emergency sanctions can lawfully serve as a standing tool of trade and tax policy.
While IEEPA gives presidents the power to regulate trade during a declared national emergency, it’s the National Emergencies Act that empowers any senator to file a privileged resolution to end that emergency with only a simple majority vote that cannot be filibustered.
Kaine has repeatedly moved to challenge President Trump’s emergency declarations under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, arguing that the president has abused the law to impose unjustified tariffs on key trading partners. The four-term senator contends that the administration has invoked flimsy or politically motivated emergencies—such as citing Canada’s role in fentanyl trafficking or Brazil’s prosecution of former President Jair Bolsonaro—to justify sweeping tariffs that raise costs for American consumers and businesses.
He has filed privileged resolutions under the NEA to terminate these declarations every time they are renewed, emphasizing that the measures hurt his state’s economy, inflate prices on everyday goods like coffee and damage U.S. relationships with close allies. Kaine sees the issue as part of a broader constitutional question: whether Congress will defend its authority over trade, taxation and spending—or allow presidents to govern by perpetual emergency.
The senator told us that his strategy is to use every procedural tool available to a single senator to force votes on the Senate floor, particularly as a member of the minority. After his reelection last year, he tasked his staff with identifying mechanisms—whether in Senate rules or statute—that allow one senator to compel floor action without needing a committee’s approval. Many of those mechanisms, he found, are designed to check executive overreach. Kaine has since used them to trigger votes on matters such as emergency declarations, arms sales and human rights reports involving secret security agreements.
He views this approach as a way to restore congressional oversight and accountability in an era of expansive presidential power. While his IEEPA challenges and similar resolutions are unlikely to survive a veto, Kaine believes even modest bipartisan dissent in the Senate can pressure President Trump to scale back or reconsider controversial actions.
“A lot of the strategizing in the minority is about how to block stuff, and I have plenty of people in my caucus who are figuring that out,” he said. “I’m doing a different thing, which is how to force votes on stuff that would be at points of discomfort.”
Trump, on the other hand, views tariffs as a national security tool to negotiate a more favorable trade policy for Americans.
For example, the White House announced last week that Trump and President Xi Jinping of China reached an agreement wherein Beijing will pause for one year its new rare-earth export restrictions, resume large purchases of American soybeans and crack down on shipments of the chemicals that form fentanyl in return for a pledge from the U.S. to reduce some tariffs. Critics of the deal characterized it as lopsided in China’s favor because it gave Xi tangible economic and diplomatic wins while offering Trump only modest, symbolic concessions that can be easily reversed.
“It appears to most reasonable observers that Donald Trump got punked on the world stage by the Chinese Communist Party,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) told me. “Donald Trump created this massive inferno that’s spreading all across the country and now wants to pretend as if he’s a firefighter by putting out the damage that he has created. And returning to what? A status quo when you’ve already increased the expensiveness of life on so many working-class Americans.”
The Senate votes, while underscoring growing bipartisan discomfort—including among some Republicans—with the president’s use of emergency powers for sweeping trade measures, are symbolic in that they face steep obstacles in the House. GOP leadership has blocked members, through procedural schemes, from seriously taking up these resolutions and, as I mentioned above, even if they passed the House, Trump could veto them. The Senate likely lacks enough votes to override.
Jeffries told me the Senate took the appropriate action to roll back the tariffs last week because they’re making life more expensive for everyday Americans, before taking Republican leadership to task for keeping the House in recess since mid-September.
“One of the reasons why we’re not going to vote in the House is because the House has been on vacation for five consecutive weeks. They are unwilling to do their jobs. They’re running scared,” he said. “The other reason why we know House Republicans are not going to take any floor action as it relates to the tariffs is because House Republicans don’t work for the American people. They work for their puppet master Donald Trump.”
Michael Jones is an independent Capitol Hill correspondent and contributor for COURIER. He is the author of Once Upon a Hill, a newsletter about Congressional politics.
