Republicans Quietly Celebrate as Supreme Court Blocks Trump’s Tariffs

Some congressional Republicans quietly celebrated President Trump’s massive Supreme Court tariff loss on Friday.

The court ruled 6–3 to undo the president’s sweeping, illegal “Liberation Day” tariffs—a massive plank of his economic and foreign policy platform. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that Trump’s invocation of an emergency in order to impose tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act was a clear overreach of Congress’s authority and eschewed decades of precedent.

While Trump fumed, Republicans across the conservative spectrum reacted with delight.

“We all know members that we’ve talked to on the GOP side of the aisle who are silently, quietly breathing a sigh of relief,” Fox News’s Shannon Beam said on Friday after the ruling. “There have been Republicans on Capitol Hill who have voted against some of the president’s tariffs—they think it’s actually hurt the economy, and hurts their ability to go out and make the argument that this president is working to make things more affordable. So, some of them [are] quietly happy.”

John Yoo, the deputy attorney general under former President George W. Bush who was investigated for his role in the “torture memos,” echoed Beam’s sentiments.

“This might be a blessing in disguise, because we just had GDP report numbers from last year that showed the economy significantly slowed,” he said. “If all the tariffs the president announced are immediately eliminated and he has to take about a year—if he really chooses to do it again—has to take about a year to impose these tariffs again. That might actually have a positive boost on the economy, which could have a very positive effect on President Trump and Republicans by the midterm elections.”

Plenty of congressional Republicans made their feelings public. Representative Don Bacon called Justice Neil Gorsuch’s concurring opinion “perfect words.”

“Today, the Supreme Court reaffirmed authority that has rested with Congress for centuries. The American people already know that tariffs make building and buying here at home more expensive,” said Senator Mitch McConnell. “And Kentuckians understand this painful reality better than most. But the use of IEEPA to circumvent Congress in the imposition of tariffs, already without precedent, isn’t just bad policy –—it’s also illegal.”

The widespread GOP approval of this judicial loss shows that Trump may have even less control over his own party than we thought ahead of a closely watched midterm election.