This morning, in a 6'3 opinion, the Supreme Court struck down the bulk of the president's sweeping global tariffs. The majority ruled that the law Donald Trump had used to carry out most of his trade policies does not, in fact, allow the president to impose tariffs at all. This is a major setback for Trump's trade agenda, but it is far from a fatal one. The president has several alternatives that he can use to reconstruct his tariff regime, and his administration has spent months putting a plan in place to do so. Those efforts, too, may eventually be challenged in court, but fully litigating them would take years. Unless the president suddenly has a change of heart, Trump's tariff adventure is far from over. The case before the court centered on a 1977 law called the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA, which authorizes the president to 'regulate' the importation of goods in a national emergency that arises from an 'unusual and extraordinary threat.' The Trump...
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