On February 20, the Supreme Court of the United States invalidated the broad tariffs that President Donald Trump imposed on imports from Canada, China, and Mexico under one series of executive orders (the “fentanyl orders”) and on imports from all countries under a separate “reciprocal order.”
In a 6–3 decision, the Supreme Court of the United States held that the tariffs exceeded the authority delegated to the president by Congress under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). Enacted in 1977, IEEPA authorizes the executive branch to “regulate commerce” in response to national emergencies stemming from foreign threats. The Court concluded that this statutory authority does not extend to the imposition of sweeping tariffs.
The majority grounded its decision in the Constitution’s allocation of powers. The Constitution vests the taxing power — including the power to impose tariffs — in Congress, not the president. Accordingly, any presidential tariff action must rest on a clear delegation of authority from Congress. The central question before the Court was whether IEEPA constituted such a delegation. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts concluded that it did not.
“Our task today is to decide only whether the power to ‘regulate ... importation,’ as granted to the president in IEEPA, embraces the power to impose tariffs. It does not,” the opinion notes. “IEEPA contains no reference to tariffs or duties. The Government points to no statute in which Congress used the word ‘regulate’ to authorize taxation. And until now no President has read IEEPA to confer such power.”
With respect to trade and tariff policy, the decision is relatively narrow. Because the Court based its holding on a statutory interpretation of the phrase “regulate importation” within IEEPA, its reach is limited.
The ruling does not affect tariffs currently in place — or those under investigation — pursuant to other major trade statutes. These include Section 232 (national security), Section 301 (trade agreement violations or unreasonable or discriminatory practices burdening U.S. commerce), Section 201 (safeguards), and the antidumping and countervailing duty laws.
Nor does the decision offer meaningful interpretive guidance for how courts might evaluate other rarely used trade authorities, such as Section 122 (addressing international balance-of-payments concerns) or Section 338 (addressing discriminatory treatment of U.S. commerce by trading partners). In short, the Court’s opinion is confined to IEEPA and does not broadly curtail Congress’s other delegations of trade authority to the executive branch.
Because the Court’s holding turned on its conclusion that the authority to “regulate importation” does not encompass the power to impose tariffs, the decision leaves intact IEEPA’s other tools — including the authority to impose embargoes, administer sanctions programs, and freeze assets.
Significantly, the Court did not analyze IEEPA’s threshold requirements. It did not examine the necessity of declaring a national emergency based on an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to U.S. national security, foreign policy, or the economy that originates outside the United States. Nor did it address the statutory requirement that actions taken under IEEPA must “deal with” the declared emergency and not extend beyond it.
As a result, the Court never reached the broader questions raised by the challenged tariffs — including whether a decades-long trade deficit could qualify as “unusual or extraordinary,” or whether sweeping tariffs on a wide range of consumer goods could reasonably be said to “deal with” a fentanyl-related national emergency.
The Court did not address the issue of refunds and sent the two cases before it back to the Court of International Trade (CIT) for final resolution.
According to data from the Yale Budget Lab, absent the IEEPA tariffs, consumers would face an overall average effective tariff rate of 9.1 percent — the highest level since 1946 (excluding 2025). Had the IEEPA tariffs remained in place, that figure would have risen to 16.9 percent.
However, the president has since issued an executive order imposing 10 percent tariffs under Section 122 and, a day later, announced on social media his intention to increase those tariffs to 15 percent. Based on the most current estimates — assuming the higher rate is implemented — the average effective tariff rate would reach approximately 13.7 percent.