Trump’s Response to Supreme Court Rejecting His Tariffs Is New Tariffs
The president’s hotly anticipated backup plan to replace his unacceptable global tariffs is, basically, to just keep doing the tariffs regardless.The Supreme Court deemed Donald Trump’s “liberation day” tariffs illegal Friday morning, throwing not only the White House’s economic plan into wack, but also the primary driver behind the administration’s foreign policy agenda.But the judicial conclusion was of no matter to Trump. In a White House press conference that afternoon, Trump revealed that he would impose an additional 10 percent global levy while keeping the remaining ones in place, blatantly flouting the judicial order.“Going forward, we’re going to take in more money,” Trump said.The new tariffs will begin in three days, according to the president.Trump was clearly irate over the decision, huffing between his sentences as he slumped over the lectern, slandering many of his Republican allies in a loose, slapdash speech to the nation.“I don’t think the court meant it, because the court doesn’t show great spirit toward our country, in my opinion,” Trump continued, suggesting that members of the nation’s highest judiciary had been compromised by foreign interests. “Lots of very bad decisions.”In the court’s 6–3 majority opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that Trump’s use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act as the foundation for his tariff plan was an erroneous overreach of his office’s power.“Slimeballs,” Trump said, referring to the justices who voted against his tariffs—two of whom, Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett, he appointed, in 2017 and 2020 respectively.Responding to a reporter’s question, Trump rejected previous comments that he had made claiming the country would be “financially defenseless” without his tariffs.“They write this terrible, defective decision,” Trump said. “It’s almost like it’s written by not smart people.”When asked whether his administration would abide by the order and issue refunds to countries that had been affected by his tariffs, Trump barked that attempting to do so would result in the topic being relitigated in courts for the “next five years.”Roberts noted in his opinion that the country’s founders “gave ‘Congress alone’ the power to impose tariffs during peacetime,” broadly upending any possibility for the White House to create a tariff proposal all on its own. But the president appeared nonetheless unwilling to work with his legislative peers as of Friday.“Why didn’t you work with Congress to enact a tariff plan?” pressed a reporter.“I didn’t have to,” Trump insisted.This story has been updated.