Trump throws a temper tantrum after tariff loss at the Supreme Court : NPR
President Trump blasted the Supreme Court majority that struck down his use of emergency powers to implement international tariffs.
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This time last year, President Trump warmly shook Chief Justice John Roberts’ hand during the State of the Union address, thanking him for the opinion he authored granting Trump and other presidents in the future broad immunity from prosecution for their official actions after leaving office. But on Friday, after the Supreme Court struck down Trump’s tariffs, the president struck a decidedly different tone.
At a hastily called news conference, an agitated Trump denounced the conservative Roberts and two of the court’s other conservatives, Justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett, both Trump appointees.
“They are just fools and lapdogs for RINOs and radical left Democrats,” Trump said, using the seemingly derisive acronym for “Republicans in Name Only.”
And that wasn’t almost all. Trump called the three conservatives “disloyal, unpatriotic” and at one point launched into a speech about how the court should have invalidated the results of the 2020 election, which Trump lost to Joe Biden.
The origin of the legal battle
The battle over tariffs began on the first day of Trump’s second term, when he signed an executive order that allowed him to impose a wide range of tariffs on virtually all of the United States’ trading partners, with those duties paid primarily by American businesses.
But on Friday, Trump suffered a massive defeat at the Supreme Court. Writing by a wide 6-3 majority, Chief Justice Roberts said the nation’s founders deliberately and explicitly entrusted the power to impose taxes, including tariffs, to Congress, not the president.
As the Chief Justice put it: “Having led a revolution motivated in large part by the taxes imposed on them” by the King of England without their consent, the Framers drafted a Constitution that gave Congress the power to tax because the members of the legislature would be more accountable to the people.
Nonetheless, Trump asserted during his press conference that he would continue his tariffs, using alternative laws that would allow him to act without congressional consent.
There are in fact several laws which allow it to impose certain prices itself, but they are limited. For example, one of the key laws he cited Friday allows him to impose certain tariffs himself, but only for six months, after which he must get approval from Congress. The other laws he cited contain other provisions that make unilateral action much more difficult.
The other problem facing Trump is that the billions of dollars already collected in tariffs were supposed to offset tax cuts passed last year by the Republican-dominated Congress at Trump’s request. But today the money is no longer there.
How much money is at stake? A lot.
The federal government collects about $30 billion in tariffs a month, about half of which will be eliminated by Friday’s court ruling. So this is a big problem for American companies who pay the lion’s share of these tariffs. That said, customs duties still only represent a fairly small share of the government’s overall revenue; about 5%. So if half the tariff money disappears, it will result in a larger, but not crippling, federal deficit.
Unlike the fall in the stock market when the tariffs were introduced, the market reaction on Friday was relatively stable. That could be because investors believe the White House will try to follow through on its threat to replace the banned tariffs with other taxes, using different laws in which the president’s assertions about his authority are clearer. However, even these laws have more conditions. None give Trump the power he claimed to have to impose unlimited tariffs on products from any country, for any reason.
The court’s decision came on the day the government published new figures on economic growth. They show that the economy weathered Trump’s tariff campaign relatively well last year. In 2025, gross domestic product grew by 2.2%, a bit slower than the previous year, but still respectable. Yet even with all the tariffs imposed by Trump, imports did not decline last year.
Will there be refunds?
The Supreme Court’s ruling did not resolve the question of whether U.S. companies that paid tariffs last year can get their money back. Chief Justice Roberts did not explain how the refunds might work, so a lower court will have to figure that out.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh, in his dissent, warned that this could be a disaster, echoing comments made during oral arguments. But veteran commercial lawyer Robert Leo says that while repaying those tens of billions of dollars will take work, it is entirely achievable.
“It won’t be a waste,” he says, pointing out that “customs has all this information electronically. And I’ve spoken with our customers and they know how much they paid.”
Indeed, the National Retail Federation issued a statement Friday urging the lower court to ensure what it called “a transparent process” for refunding money that was improperly collected from importers.
How the judges decided
What does Friday’s Supreme Court decision tell us about the very conservative Supreme Court?
First, the decision illustrates how vigilant this Court is about what it considers stealing from people’s pockets; in other words, it’s about money. And the majority opinion is what you might call “a John Roberts special.”
He wrote a concise decision, accommodated the majority justices as much as necessary to retain their votes, and got the job done, on relatively short notice, for a Supreme Court decision, of course.
The ruling clearly tells the president to stay on his constitutional course, but at the same time Roberts’ opinion only decides what needs to be decided and gives lower courts clear guidance on how to limit Trump’s efforts to circumvent the opinion.
The decision evenly divided the conservative majority. Roberts’ opinion was joined by two of the other conservative courts, Trump-appointed Gorsuch and Barrett, as well as the three liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
At the same time, the decision speaks to a court that is not particularly collegial and deeply fractured, not so much on the question of who wins and who loses, but rather on how they win or lose.
On Friday, for example, Roberts wrote a 21-page opinion, but there were four concurring opinions, including one, Justice Gorsuch’s, totaling 46 pages. As for the dissent, Justice Kavanaugh wrote a 63-page dissent and Justice Clarence Thomas wrote an 18-page dissent. The only justices who wrote nothing at all were Justices Sotomayor, in the majority, and Justice Samuel Alito, dissenting.
In other words, almost everyone wants to have a say.
