On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will consider whether President Donald Trump overstepped his authority by claiming emergency power to impose tariffs around the world. The high court, which has frequently ruled in Trump’s favor, has a lot at stake: A win for Trump could, once again, expand the powers of the presidency forever.
The case, Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump (consolidated with Trump v. V.O.S. Selections) asks a simple question: Does the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA, give the president the authority to impose tariffs?
Before making its way to the Supreme Court justices, lower courts, the Court of International Trade and appellate courts have already ruled that IEEPA did not authorize Trump’s tariffs.
Under the Constitution’s Article I Section 8, when it comes to levying or imposing taxes, it is Congress — not the executive branch — that has the “power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises.”
But as the National Constitution Center points out, over the years Congress has increasingly allowed the executive branch’s role in enacting tariff-based policy to expand. Even so, until Trump, there has never before been a president who has declared that he alone has the power to impose tariffs in an “emergency” situation of his own making.
Since January, Trump has declared national emergencies nearly every month — at least nine so far — and on matters mostly related to immigration and the economy. He issued three executive orders in February that imposed tariffs, or taxes on imported goods, on Mexico, Canada and China in order to supposedly stem fentanyl from flowing into the U.S.; he issued a “Reciprocal Tariff Emergency” in April via executive order; and in July, he issued an order imposing emergency sanctions against Brazil.
When he issued the executive orders on tariffs, Trump cited IEEPA — a statute which does not mention the word “tariff” nor “tax” at all — as the unilateral authority permitted to impose tariffs in order to “deal with any unusual and extraordinary threat, which has its source in whole or substantial part outside the United States, to the national security, foreign policy, or economy of the United States, if the president declares a national emergency with respect to such threat.”
Trump administration lawyers have hinged Trump’s authority on the word “regulate” which appears in IEEPA, suggesting this word indicates the powers afforded to the president to address economic emergencies. They also argue that if the Supreme Court deals the president a loss in the tariff fight, it will force the White House to renegotiate trade deals with partners or refund others who have already shoveled import taxes to America.
The so-called “emergency” in Trump’s mind is the nation’s trade deficits. Their very existence, in his argument, constitutes a dire threat to national security. Without the power to impose tariffs, Trump said on Truth Social it could lead the U.S. to be “defenseless” or worse, “perhaps even to the ruination of our Nation.”
But as the Federal Reserve Bank notes, the U.S. has been operating under a trade deficit for over 50 years ― and trade deficits, as dozens of economists and public policy research organizations pointed out to the Supreme Court already, are actually pretty normal.
“Trade deficits, however, have existed consistently over the past fifty years in the United States, for extended periods in the United States in the nineteenth century, and in most countries in most years in recent decades. They are thus not ’unusual and extraordinary,” dozens of economists wrote in a friend of the court brief opposing the administration in July.
Nor, the brief notes, are they a threat to national security. And even if they were, the tariffs imposed by Trump “do not meaningfully reduce trade deficits.”
The groups who sued Trump over his imposed tariffs — which include states, educational toymakers who manufacture goods in Asia, and a wine importer and women’s apparel company — argue the only emergency they see is what’s happening to their bottom line as a result of Trump’s actions.
As one of the plaintiff companies put it to the Supreme Court, the administration’s tariff tactics have forced them to put orders on pause ― made it so they will “likely be unable to pay its employees, will lose money and as a result, may go out of business.”
Trump’s tariffs have caused inflation to soar on everything from electricity to groceries, and according to the Tax Foundation, the tariffs amount to an average tax increase per American household of $1,200 in 2025.
In 2026, it is predicted to be up to at least $1,600 per household.
For the Supreme Court, the tension lies in what the statutory text of IEEPA actually says, and how the justices perceive key legal doctrines known as the “major questions doctrine” and the ”non-delegation doctrine.”
The “major questions doctrine” essentially states that government agencies must be crystal clear about how they have the authority to take action when it comes to issues of “vast ‘economic and political significance.’” There can be no wiggle room about whether Congress meant to delegate that particular power out.
The “non-delegation doctrine” essentially states that powers which belong to Congress, namely, legislative authority — which, again, includes taxation — cannot be transferred to the executive.
During a recent panel discussion hosted by Democracy Forward, Max Sarinsky, the regulatory policy director at New York University Institute for Policy Integrity, noted that under the major questions doctrine, extraordinary grants of executive authority “must be treated with skepticism.”
The Supreme Court has said that a claim to power is extraordinary when it is entirely unprecedented under a statute, when it would transform the role of the government actor taking it, and when there’s a vast economic and political significance, Sarinsky explained. He noted that the high court, for example, considered this doctrine when it overturned former President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness program, blocked Biden’s vaccine and test program, and suspended Biden’s Clean Power Plan.
The extraordinariness of the actions Trump is taking with tariffs — and the massive economic roiling that comes with it — means all three factors under the major questions doctrine are triggered, Sarinksy says.
Where typically IEEPA has been used to impose targeted economic sanctions, like, for example, prohibiting transactions with the Taliban or restricting uranium enrichment, Trump’s use of it is “truly unheralded.”
“No president has ever issued any tariffs under IEEPA nor has any president acted with such sweeping authority in any sphere under IEEPA. It’s always been used quite narrowly. It would fundamentally transform the statute into a blank check to rebalance international trade,” he said.
And as far as delegation rules go, Sarinsky highlighted that Congress already has avenues open to the executive to issue tariffs or shape tariff policy. Laws are already on the books, Sarinsky noted, that allow the president to issue tariffs in response to the balance of payment deficits. The difference is that those laws have limits and guardrails.
“Trump is trying to sidestep that authority altogether and go to IEEPA to impose tariffs without any limitation in a way that he claims is not judicially reviewable,” he said.
To underline that point, Martin Flaherty, visiting professor for Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, noted during the Democracy Forward panel the point in time that IEEPA was created: right after the Nixon presidency when the powers of the executive were being reined in, not expanded.
“It was no accident that IEEPA is passed about the same time as the War Powers Resolution to deal with [the] Vietnam [War] or the Ethics in Government Act to deal with Watergate. IEEPA is a part of all this: It was an attempt to rein in presidential power and truly limit it to war situations or real emergencies,” he said.
What Trump is doing — and wants the Supreme Court to rubber-stamp — “completely reverses” what IEEPA is about.
“One way to think about this: The president is engaging in a power grab by trying to use the statute designed to prevent additional presidential power grabs,” Flaherty said.