President Donald Trump has vowed to raise worldwide tariffs to 15 percent, up from 10 percent, “effective immediately,” he said in a Truth Social post Saturday following a defeat in the Supreme Court.
The move comes as the Supreme Court yesterday ruled his sweeping global tariffs, ushered in under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, were unlawfully imposed. He used the act to charge huge levies on countries, including 50 percent on India, which was later reduced, and 34 percent on China.
Speaking from the White House briefing room Friday, a seething Trump called the 6-3 Supreme Court ruling striking down much of his unilateral tariff policy “deeply disappointing” and said he was “absolutely ashamed” of the Republican appointees on the court who’d failed to back his signature policy.
Trump said he was bumping up the tariffs to 15 percent “based on a thorough, detailed, and complete review of the ridiculous, poorly written, and extraordinarily anti-American decision on Tariffs issued yesterday.”
“Please let this statement serve to represent that I, as President of the United States of America, will be, effective immediately, raising the 10% Worldwide Tariff on Countries, many of which have been “ripping” the U.S. off for decades, without retribution (until I came along!), to the fully allowed, and legally tested, 15% level,” Trump said.
“During the next short number of months, the Trump Administration will determine and issue the new and legally permissible Tariffs, which will continue our extraordinarily successful process of Making America Great Again – GREATER THAN EVER BEFORE!!!” the president wrote on his social media platform.
The White House shared the president’s Truth Social to its official X account.
Trump also hailed Justice Brett Kavanaugh his “new hero” after he sided with the president, as did Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.
“My new hero is United States Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and, of course, Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito,” Trump said in another Truth Social post. “There is no doubt in anyone’s mind that they want to, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
After the court’s decision, Trump announced he would instead use the 1974 Trade Act to continue his tariff agenda. But the Trade Act only allows a maximum tariff of 15 percent and comes with a limit of 150 days, unless Congress votes to extend it.
“The president asserts the extraordinary power to unilaterally impose tariffs of unlimited amount, duration, and scope. In light of the breadth, history, and constitutional context of that asserted authority, he must identify clear congressional authorization to exercise it,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in a 6-3 decision Friday.
Conservative Justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett, both appointed by Trump, joined Roberts as well as liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson in ruling against the president.
Trump and his aides have expected a negative ruling in the case for months and have been preparing other authorities for taxing imports — which, like tariffs, are ultimately shouldered by consumers — but those other avenues are far more limited than the broad powers Trump had asserted for himself.
He also threatened to invoke Section 338 of the 1930 Tariff Act to impose as much as a 50 percent tax on imports from countries that discriminate against American products. That portion of the United States Code has its roots in the infamous Smoot-Hawley tariff enacted during the Great Depression — with the effect of worsening the economic devastation caused by the stock market crash a year earlier — and has never been used by a president in the modern era.
