Trump’s Epic Loss on Tariffs Is Even Worse for Him than You Think
The Supreme Court’s stunning decision invalidating Donald Trump’s tariffs isn’t just a major legal setback, though it certainly is that. The loss before the high court is also another sign that the pillars of Trump’s right-wing nationalist agenda are crumbling in a much broader and deeper sense—so much so that they’re posing a serious threat to the long-term durability of the ideology known as Trumpism.
If you had to name the two most essential pillars of Trumpian populist nationalism, you’d probably single out his sweeping tariffs and his campaign to deport all undocumented immigrants. The tariffs are supposed to unleash a domestic manufacturing renaissance, and the mass expulsions are designed to ethnically and culturally purify the nation. Together they make up much of the foundation of Trumpism’s fantasy version of nationalist renewal.
Both of those are now in crisis. The tariffs have been broadly invalidated. And in the aftermath of ICE’s invasion of Minneapolis, the deportations of noncriminal undocumented immigrants—while still proceeding—have been widely discredited in the minds of all but the molten MAGA core and face determined resistance all across American culture and society.
The Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision is sweeping. Trump claimed extraordinarily broad tariff authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), citing its grant of authority to “regulate…importation.” But as the majority notes, that simply does not constitute an authority to tax—the statute doesn’t even include the word “tariffs.”
The ruling authored by Chief Justice John Roberts is scathing on this point. It declares that Trump read “regulate” and “importation” to somehow grant him “the independent power to impose tariffs on imports from any country, of any product, at any rate, for any amount of time.” It concludes that “regulate” and “importation” are words that “cannot bear such weight.”
In invalidating the tariffs that Trump imposed under IEEPA, the court just knocked down around 60 percent to 70 percent of Trump’s tariffs, says trade expert Scott Lincicome, including a chunk of levies on China, Mexico, and Canada, all global reciprocal tariffs, and a number of others.
Though Trump will probably be able to use other authorities to reimpose some of these tariffs, Lincicome says, those will face statutory limits, and Trump now must refund $175 billion in revenues plus interest. “Trump’s still going to be able to do tariffs,” Lincicome tells me. “But he’s going to have to follow a lot more rules, and it will curtail his ability to impose tariffs on a whim. The need to refund will be a bureaucratic mess and a significant fiscal hit to his agenda.”
It’s notable that some of Trump’s worst abuses of power have been employed toward those twin pillars of economic nationalism—tariffs and deportations. The tariffs constituted a virtually unconstrained usurpation of authority that the Constitution grants to Congress. The expulsions have involved all sorts of authoritarian abuses, from extralegal expulsions to foreign gulags to efforts to suspend due process on a mass scale to the building out of a massive archipelago of prison camps to the illegal deployment of the military in American cities to the murder of pro-immigrant U.S. citizens on the streets of Minneapolis.
In this sense, the key features of Trump’s right-wing nationalism are also among the aspects of his agenda that are most deeply entangled with his authoritarianism. There’s a reason for this: Many other institutional elements of the system—and most of the American public—simply are not on board with either.
Trump could never get Congress to authorize his tariffs, which are also widely opposed by American businesses of all sizes. Meanwhile, Trump immigration adviser Stephen Miller has tacitly prodded Trump to end due process, ignore the courts, and assume quasi-dictatorial powers precisely because the law and the courts do pose a genuine obstacle to realizing the vast numbers of mass removals he craves.
It’s also no accident that the tariffs and the deportations are the locus points of Trump’s most spectacular governing failures. The tariffs have utterly failed to restore manufacturing jobs, which are falling in part due to the misguided application of the tariffs themselves.
Meanwhile, the deportations have unleashed extraordinary suffering among countless undocumented Americans and their families (though Miller might view this as a positive) while inadvertently driving many Americans to show more solidarity with immigrants than in the past. Achieving Miller’s desired scale of ethnic reengineering has unleashed searing, violent social tensions and diverted massive law enforcement resources into removals and away from serious crimes. It’s sinking tens of billions in taxpayers dollars into the creation of a hypermilitarized domestic secret police force and supercharged immigrant carceral state. Only the most fanatical anti-immigrant ideologues will view these as reasonable national priorities.
Indeed, the tariffs and deportations are also among the most important causes of Trump’s deep unpopularity. Large majorities disapprove of the tariffs, of ICE enforcement, and even of the deportation of longtime residents with jobs and no criminal records. The result: Trump’s approval is deeply underwater on the economy and on immigration. Which has created an unusual situation: The economy and immigration are traditional GOP strengths, but Trump has managed the distinction of being a Republican president who is profoundly unpopular on both.
After Trump’s 2024 win, many commentators discerned in the results a deep, durable national shift toward Trumpist populist nationalism. But as it turns out, two of that ideology’s most critical elements are driving his biggest policy fiascos and his cratering standing with the public alike—in short, they constitute perhaps the most important reasons that his entire presidency is sinking deeper and deeper into utter, monumental failure.