Supreme Court tariff ruling has Trump administration, US businesses bracing for impact

The Supreme Court could rule as early as Friday on President Donald Trump’s use of an emergency law to unilaterally impose sweeping tariffs on most U.S. trading partners, a closely watched case with major implications for businesses and the president himself.

At issue is the president's use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to impose two sweeping sets of tariffs, including the 10% global tariffs and the higher, so-called "reciprocal" tariffs in early April. 

Lower courts had ruled that Trump exceeded his authority in using IEEPA as a means of quickly enacting those import fees, prompting the Supreme Court to take up the case on an expedited basis last year. A decision is expected by June at the latest.

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But justices on the high court, including Trump's own appointees, appeared skeptical of the administration's claim during oral arguments that the IEEPA gives a sitting president the authority to unilaterally impose tariffs, leaving open the question of what might happen if the high court rules against the president. 

Trump, for his part, has described the matter as "life and death," and senior administration officials have warned for months of dire economic consequences if the high court were to undo the tariffs enacted by Trump, which have remained in place as the courts considered the case on its merits. 

But the short answer, experts told Fox News Digital, is that not much would change immediately, and it would almost certainly involve more litigation. 

In the months since the high court reviewed the consolidated case, Learning Resources, Inc, and V.O.S. Selections, Inc. v. Trump, hundreds of businesses have filed new cases against the Trump administration over IEEPA, aimed at clawing back the higher import duties they've shouldered since his tariffs took force. 

The U.S. collected more than $133 billion in IEEPA tariff duties as of mid-December, according to data published by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency last month.

And, assuming the Supreme Court does not specifically outline a remedy portion of its ruling for the executive branch to follow, the cases will be punted back to the lower courts to chart a path forward, lawyers for the new plaintiffs said. 

"There's a group of us working with the Department of Justice on getting a case management plan implemented," Erik Smithweiss, a trade lawyer representing some of the companies that have filed the new tariff lawsuits, told Fox News Digital in an interview. 

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"In the event the tariffs are found to be unlawful, the Court of International Trade (CIT) is going to manage these thousands of lawsuits and many more that may be coming." 

Trump, for his part, has railed against that outcome, which he described in a Truth Social post as a "National Security catastrophe."

Lawyers for the Trump administration argued in court that the IEEPA law in question allows a president to act in response to "unusual and extraordinary threats" and in cases where a national emergency has been declared. Trump has claimed that deep and "sustained" trade deficits amount to a national emergency, allowing him, in the lawyers' view, to invoke IEEPA.

Plaintiffs counter that, in the 50 years since its passage, the law has never been used by a president to impose tariffs. They argue that permitting Trump to use the law to enact tariffs would drastically expand his powers at the expense of other branches of government. 

Others were more cautious about the possible impact.

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"It's a fascinating situation because it's super important. But, in the short run, economically, this doesn't matter a huge deal," Philip Luck, the director of the economics program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), told Fox News Digital in an interview. 

"It matters in the sense that, yes, if this comes down, some goods will become cheaper," Luck said when asked what would happen if the Supreme Court ruled against Trump's use of IEEPA to impose his tariffs. "Some exporters will be able to export to the United States more cheaply."

On its own, though, the ruling is unlikely to stop the Trump administration from imposing the tariffs via other mechanisms at its disposal, including Section 232, by which the administration can enact industry-wide tariffs for a set period of time, or under Section 301, which allows the U.S. Trade Representative's office to enact tariffs at a president's direction in response to countries that are determined to have "discriminatory" trade practices towards U.S. businesses.  

"More broadly, so long as this administration is intent on raising barriers to a broad set of important goods, they will be able to do that again," Luck said. 

"A few sectoral tariffs onto very broad sectors and a few country-level tariffs — if you levy tariffs on our large trading partners — cover some 90% of our trade."