Trump admin faces deeply skeptical Supreme Court in early tariff arguments

Chief Justice John Roberts asked very punchy questions of the administration during the first hour of the debate, but he’s now pressing the attorney representing the small businesses challenging the tariffs.

It’s not as easy, Roberts said, to simply frame a tariff as a tax – a power reserved to Congress.

“It implicates, very directly, the president’s foreign affairs power,” said Roberts, who is a key vote to watch in the case.

Trump’s tariffs, Roberts said, were “quite effective” in achieving the president’s particular objective.

That position is closely aligned with the administration’s position that a president has broad power in the context of foreign affairs.

One of the last questions before the plaintiffs’ arguments began came from Justice Amy Coney Barrett.

In addition to questioning the Trump administration’s novel use of a federal law to impose higher tariffs, she challenged why all countries are being subjected to “reciprocal” tariffs to begin with.

“Is it your contention that every country needed to be tariffed because of threats to the defense and industrial base? I mean, Spain, France? I could see it with some countries, but explain to me why as many countries needed to be subject to the reciprocal tariff policy,” Barrett asked Solicitor General D. John Sauer, who is representing the Trump administration.

Sauer argued that the “reciprocal” tariffs Trump imposed are intentionally broad “because the emergency is so broad.” In enacting those tariffs, Trump has declared a national emergency stemming in part from alleged unfair trade policies practiced abroad.

The long — and sometimes heated — round of questioning between Solicitor General D. John Sauer, who is representing the Trump administration, and the justices, has concluded.

Now Neal Katyal, the lawyer for the businesses challenging President Donald Trump’s argument for using emergency authorities to raise tariffs, is making his case.

Storm clouds hover over the dome of the US Capitol in Washington, DC, on October 30.

In another bad sign for the administration, Justice Neil Gorsuch is pressing Solicitor General D. John Sauer on the power of Congress to delegate its authority to the president. Gorsuch, a member of the conservative wing and a Trump nominee, has been a proponent of what’s known as the “nondelegation doctrine,” intended to keep clear lines separating the powers of Congress and the president.

If Congress can delegate its constitutional authority to levy tariffs, Gorsuch pressed, what else could it delegate?

“If that’s true, what would prohibit Congress from just abdicating all responsibility to regulate foreign commerce – for that matter, to declare war – to the president,” Gorsuch asked.

The point of Gorsuch’s question speaks directly to the idea of separation of powers. That aligns with an argument raised by the businesses challenging the tariffs: that imposing import duties, by default, is a power held by Congress.

Justice Elena Kagan greets President Donald Trump after his address to a joint session of Congress on March 4, in Washington, DC.

Liberal Justice Elena Kagan appeared to take a jab at President Donald Trump’s repeated declarations of emergencies this year as a legal basis to expand the powers of his office and implement his agenda.

“You yourself think that the declaration of emergency is unreviewable. And even if it’s not unreviewable, it’s, of course, the kind of determination that this court would grant considerable deference to the to the president on,” Kagan told Solicitor General D. John Sauer.

“And in fact, you know, we’ve had cases recently which deal with the president’s emergency powers. And it turns out we’re in emergencies - everything all the time, about, like, half the world,” she added.

The administration is arguing that courts don’t have the power to second-guess the president’s determination that emergencies – like the ones he’s using to justify his tariffs – exist. The same argument has been pushed in cases challenging Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act to speed up deportations and his deployment of National Guard troops in major US cities.

Courts typically give presidents a great deal of deference when it comes to cases involving emergency declarations, though several this year have rejected Trump’s argument that, as an initial matter, they lack authority to review those determinations at all.

President Donald Trump’s attorney faced deep skepticism from several key conservative justices in early arguments at the Supreme Court over his sweeping global tariffs – a potentially troubling sign for the administration.

Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett, in particular, pressed the administration hard on several points, including whether the law at issue in the case authorized Trump to impose his emergency tariffs.

Roberts pushed back on key arguments from the administration, suggesting that the language in the law – which permits a president to “regulate” imports – may not be clear enough to justify the import duties. Barrett, meanwhile, asked Solicitor General D. John Sauer whether the court had ever viewed the term to “regulate” to include sweeping tariffs.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh, too, seemed skeptical of one of the administration’s historical arguments: That former President Richard Nixon was permitted by courts to impose tariffs under a precursor to the law at issue in the case.

The arguments are still ongoing and, often, the direction of the session can change with subsequent attorneys. However, Sauer has been asked to confront a number of serious and difficult questions from the conservative wing.

Chief Justice John Roberts, who has asked a number of questions skeptical of the administration’s arguments, at one point emphasized Congress’ “core power” of regulating taxes, rejecting the government’s claim that the tariffs aren’t taxes.

“The vehicle is imposition of taxes on Americans, and that has always been the core power of Congress,” Roberts said. “So to have the president’s foreign affairs power trump that basic power for Congress seems to me to kind of at least neutralize between the two powers, the executive power and the legislative power.”

The challengers to President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs have noted that American taxpayers, not foreign companies, ultimately pay for them. The administration has framed the tariffs as “regulatory” and have argued they are not taxes.

It’s early in oral arguments at Wednesday’s landmark tariff case, but already there’s been a key moment: Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who was appointed by President Donald Trump, questions the administration’s novel use of a law to raise tariffs.

“Can you point to any other place in the code or any other time in history where that phrase, ‘to regulate importation’ has been used?” Barrett asked Solicitor General D. John Sauer, referring to language in a federal law the Trump administration has relied on to increase tariffs.

When Sauer waffled, Barrett pressed on.

In a testy back and forth with Solicitor General D. John Sauer, liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson pushed back strongly on his argument that the emergency law President Donald Trump leaned on to impose his tariffs gave Trump sweeping authority.

“It’s pretty clear that Congress was trying to constrain the emergency powers of the president in IEEPA,” Jackson said, referring to the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which was enacted in the 1970s.

“So it seems a little inconsistent to say that we have to interpret a statute that was designed to constrain presidential authority consistent with an understanding that Congress wanted the president to have essentially unlimited authority,” she added.

In a potentially key early moment for the arguments, Chief Justice John Roberts is questioning a key argument made by the Trump administration to justify its tariffs.

Roberts pressed Solicitor General D. John Sauer on a case called Dames & Moore v. Regan. That case, which the administration relies on heavily, okayed former President Jimmy Carter’s decision to use frozen Iranian assets as a “bargaining chip” to win the release of 52 American hostages.

Roberts seemed skeptical of the idea that the administration could hang its hat on that case. That decision was narrow, Roberts said.

“This at issue in Dames & Moore involved a different provision,” he said, “and it certainly did not concern tariffs.”

Roberts should know. He was a clerk to then-Justice William Rehnquist, who authored the opinion.

President Donald Trump speaks at the White House on Wednesday.

President Donald Trump on Tuesday warned that the Supreme Court case on his sweeping emergency tariffs represents a “life or death” moment for the country, framing the stakes in stark economic and national security terms.

The Supreme Court is meeting today to hear oral arguments over Trump’s global emergency tariffs, and will also be deciding the limits of a president’s power – an area in which the court’s 6-3 conservative majority has repeatedly sided with Trump since he began his second term in January.

“Tomorrow’s United States Supreme Court case is, literally, LIFE OR DEATH for our Country,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Tuesday.

The president tied the case to his administration’s trade policies, crediting tariffs and new trade deals for what he described as historic economic success.

Conservative Justice Clarence Thomas, as he often does during oral arguments at the Supreme Court these days, is posing the first question in the major tariffs case.

He’s asking why the “major questions doctrine” shouldn’t apply in the case, as it has in several past cases involving former President Joe Biden, in which the court shut down that administration’s policies.

People walk outside the Supreme Court building in Washington, DC on Wednesday.

Chief Justice John Roberts announced a few minutes after 10 a.m. ET that the court is kicking off arguments over President Donald Trump’s global tariffs, the formal start to a session that will continue throughout the morning.

First up to the podium is US Solicitor General D. John Sauer, the administration’s top appellate attorney. He is scheduled for 40 minutes.

How the justices handle Sauer’s presentation could be key to understanding the outcome of the case: If Sauer takes a series of tough questions from the conservative justices, that would be a bad sign for the administration.

If, on the other hand, he takes mostly softballs, that could signal trouble for the businesses challenging the emergency tariffs.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is in attendance at Wednesday’s landmark Supreme Court hearing on tariffs at the request of President Donald Trump, who had initially said he was interested in attending.

Bessent has been one of the leading forces in enacting Trump’s tariff-heavy trade policy agenda. The Treasury secretary said earlier this week, “I am there to emphasize that this is an economic emergency,” referring to his appearence at the hearing.

An aerial view of shipping containers at the Port of Baltimore in Baltimore, Maryland, on August 7, 2025.

The Supreme Court will hear arguments Wednesday over President Donald Trump’s sweeping global tariffs, the most significant economic case to reach the high court in years and a major test of the president’s power.

At issue are tariffs Trump imposed on China, Mexico, Canada and virtually every global trading partner under a 1977 law that gives the president power to “regulate” imports during declared emergencies. The question for the justices is whether that term, “regulate,” permits tariffs.

If it does, the Trump administration will have free rein to continue his policy of turning tariffs on and off and re-setting rates as it negotiates trade deals with allies and adversaries alike – an approach that many businesses say has increased both costs and uncertainty.

But if the court rules that the law at issue doesn’t give Trump the authority to set tariffs then the administration will have to rely on other tariff laws. The problem for Trump is that those laws include limits — such as caps on the size of a tariff — or other hurdles that would make it difficult for the administration to use the import duties as leverage.

A loss for Trump would also open up the possibility of refunds for importers, claims that could run into the tens of billions of dollars.

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Justice Brett Kavanaugh speaks at a panel at the Eighth Circuit Court Judicial Conference on Thursday, July 31, 2025, in Kansas City, Missouri. (AP Photo/Nick Ingram)

Because the Supreme Court appeal over President Donald Trump’s tariffs involves relatively novel legal issues, all nine justices will be closely scrutinized as they begin firing questions at the attorneys standing before them on Wednesday.

But Justice Brett Kavanaugh may be particularly important to watch. The Trump nominee – who, along with Chief Justice John Roberts, is often in the majority more than any of the nine – just last year suggested that one of the key arguments raised by the businesses challenging Trump may not apply in the context of foreign affairs.

The plaintiffs who sued Trump have argued that the so-called “major questions doctrine” should help decide the case in their favor. That doctrine requires an administration to demonstrate that Congress explicitly intended for the government to wield certain powers when it comes to matters of immense economic or political significance.

In this case, the businesses challenging Trump say the law is not even close to clear.

But, just last year, in an unrelated case, Kavanaugh stressed in a concurring opinion that the doctrine hasn’t traditionally been applied when it comes to foreign affairs.

“The major questions canon has not been applied by this court in the national security or foreign policy contexts, because the canon does not reflect ordinary congressional intent in those areas,” Kavanaugh wrote. On the contrary, he said, the “usual understanding” is that Congress gives a president “substantial authority and flexibility to protect America and the American people” in those contexts.

Roberts has also embraced the “major questions” doctrine in important cases, and the chief justice often writes high-profile opinions involving foreign affairs. Both of those factors make Roberts another important figure to watch.

The International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) grants a president special powers to “deal with an unusual and extraordinary threat” that has been declared a national emergency. The case being argued before the Supreme Court considers whether President Donald Trump’s novel use of that law to impose higher tariffs was an overreach, since it never explicitly uses the word “tariff.”

But a fundamental issue at hand is also whether the events that Trump has declared national emergencies do indeed pose an unusual and extraordinary threat.

Trump has said that one impetus for imposing higher tariffs under IEEPA is to address trade deficits, which arise when a country imports more from another than it exports there. But the United States has been running trade deficits with all trading partners on and off for the past 50 years.

What’s raised eyebrows even more, though, is Trump’s use of IEEPA to enact 50% tariffs on Brazilian exports to punish the country’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, over the prosecution of right-wing former President Jair Bolsonaro.

One month after Trump enacted the tariffs on Brazil in August, Bolsonaro was found guilty of plotting a coup and was sentenced to over 27 years in prison.

The executive order Trump signed that stated:

“Political persecution, through drummed up prosecutions, threatens the orderly development of Brazil’s political, administrative, and economic institutions, including undermining the ability of Brazil to hold a free and fair election of the presidency in 2026.”

Semiconductor chips are seen on a printed circuit board in this photo illustration taken on February 17, 2023.

When David Levi was laid off a few years ago, he turned to his theremin.

The electronic instrument, which musicians play by waving their hands between two “antennas,” became the inspiration for a business, MicroKits. Today, the Virginia-based company sells electronic kits that people can use to build their own theremin – learning about electronics and music in the process.

The problem for MicroKits is that most of the electronic components it uses for those kits are made in China. Levi represents one of several small- and medium-sized businesses that have brought the fight over the tariffs to the nation’s highest court.

Other companies include a New York-based wine and spirits importer and an Illinois-based educational toy company.

Levi told CNN that his production rate is down about 40% because of the tariffs. The biggest problem, Levi said, is the uncertainty.

“It’s hard to make business decisions when there’s no warning,” he said.

Levi said he is concerned about the impact on his business if the court sides with Trump in the case.

“More importantly,” he said, “a bunch of kids, instead of building a circuit for the first time this Christmas, maybe they’ll just watch more videos on the internet.”

Letter from Justice Brennan to Justice Rehnquist.

Most judges who have considered President Donald Trump’s disputed tariffs have ruled against him. But, as the Supreme Court hears arguments Wednesday, it may be influenced by a forceful dissenting opinion that highlighted a 1981 case from the Iranian hostage crisis.

Chief Justice John Roberts knows that case well. He helped produce it, as a 26-year-old law clerk to then-Justice William Rehnquist.

Rehnquist wrote the opinion in Dames & Moore v. Regan during a hectic week that June – a “mad scramble,” Rehnquist told his fellow justices in a memo. He caught viral pneumonia in the middle of writing the opinion. Roberts himself was in the last frantic days of his clerkship and trying to study for an upcoming bar exam.

The case tested financial aspects of a deal struck by President Jimmy Carter to use frozen Iranian assets as a “bargaining chip” to win the release of 52 American hostages. Among the laws Carter invoked was the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), which Trump is now citing to justify certain tariffs, including on imported goods from Canada, Mexico and China.

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The landmark tariff case being argued in the Supreme Court on Wednesday stems from President Donald Trump’s novel use of a law known as the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to impose higher border taxes.

Upon declaring a national emergency, the law enacted in 1977 grants a president unique powers to “deal with an unusual and extraordinary threat.” The law does not explicitly specify tariffs as one of those applicable tools. The Trump administration has been arguing, though, because it states a president can “regulate … importation,” it can be taken to mean impose higher tariffs.

However, no other president has used the law that way. Rather, presidents have invoked IEEPA mainly to sanction foreign governments, businesses or individuals or to introduce embargoes on other nations’ imports.