For a moment on Friday, it looked like the courts had finally stopped Donald Trump in his tracks. The United States Supreme Court, in a sharp 6–3 ruling, declared that the sweeping tariffs the president had imposed using emergency powers were simply unconstitutional, according to Euro News. The majority was clear; taxing authority belongs to Congress, not the White House. It was, by any measure, a significant legal defeat.
Trump, however, did not blink.
Within hours, he stood before cameras and announced a brand new 10% tariff on all imports from every country in the world, a “global tariff,” he called it, signed under a different law entirely. The message was unmistakable; lose one battle, open another front.
“Some of them stand. Many of them stand. Some of them won’t and they’ll be replaced with other tariffs,” Trump said with characteristic confidence.
The original tariffs had been imposed using the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA, a 1977 law designed for sanctions, not trade policy. Trump was the first president to stretch it this far, and the court decided he had stretched it too far. Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, noted that the framers of the Constitution were deliberate: the power to tax belongs to the people’s elected representatives, not the executive branch.
But the ruling did not disarm the president entirely. Two other legal tools remain available. Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 allows targeted tariffs against countries engaging in unfair trade practices, though it requires investigations that typically take up to a year. Section 122 allows the president to act fast imposing surcharges of up to 15% but those expire automatically after 150 days unless Congress steps in to extend them.
Trump wasted no time invoking Section 122 for his new global levy. He also confirmed that existing tariffs tied to national security concerns, under a separate law called Section 232, remain fully in force.
Still, even his own Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, had quietly acknowledged that these alternatives are “not as efficient and not as powerful” as the law the court just struck down.
The legal and economic battle over American trade policy is far from over. For now, the tariffs are changing shape, not disappearing. And if Friday’s press conference proved anything, it’s that Trump views this less as a setback and more as a detour.
The road, in his view, still leads the same direction.
