Trump vows to impose 10% global tariff after Supreme Court rules sweeping duties are illegal
Donald Trump has vowed to impose a 10 per cent “global tariff” using an alternative law after the Supreme Court ruled that his sweeping duties are illegal.
In a press conference following Friday’s landmark rebuke from America’s top court, the president said: “Other alternatives will now be used to replace the new ones that the court incorrectly rejected.”
“We have alternatives, great alternatives could be more money, we’ll take in more money,” he added.
Trump said he would impose a 10 per cent levy on top of “our normal tariffs already being charged”, using the Trade Act of 1974, which allows the president to set import restrictions for up to 150 days.
It was not immediately clear which existing duties he was referring to.
Earlier on Friday, the Supreme Court ruled in a 6-3 vote that Trump exceeded his authority in using the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose tariffs on dozens of countries.
The decision marked the first significant defeat for Trump at the court, after it handed him several wins in previous cases including on the deportation of migrants.
In its ruling, the Supreme Court said: “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.”
Trump on Friday lashed out at the decision, saying it was “deeply disappointing and I’m ashamed of certain members of the court”.
The verdict, which covers the majority of the duties imposed by the White House, also threatens to cause significant disruption for America’s trading partners and companies across the world.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the opinion for the majority. Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Brett Kavanaugh dissented.
The Supreme Court did not rule on whether the US must refund revenue raised from the duties.
In his dissenting opinion, Kavanaugh wrote: “The Court says nothing today about whether, and if so how, the Government should go about returning the billions of dollars that it has collected from importers.”
The case was brought by groups of American businesses, joined by 12 US states, that argued they had been harmed by the tariffs.
In its ruling, the court said that in “IEEPA’s ‘half century of existence’, no President has invoked the statute to impose any tariffs — let alone tariffs of this magnitude and scope”.
Trump announced his tariff regime on “liberation day” last April, sparking weeks of turmoil in financial markets and alarming US allies.
Although he has since backed away from imposing some of the most severe duties, the US ended 2025 with an effective tariff rate of more than 10 per cent — the highest since the second world war.
The reaction in markets was relatively muted. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite climbed steadily to close higher by 0.6 per cent and 0.8 per cent, respectively. The dollar index hovered 0.2 per cent lower and the yield on the two-year Treasury was fractionally higher.
Jason Borbora-Sheen, a portfolio manager at Ninety One, said the response indicated that the outcome was “largely expected . . . and the administration has had a while to plan their reaction”.
Stock markets have recovered since “liberation day” to hit record highs, but polls indicate that many Americans think the tariffs are hurting the country’s economy.
US stocks close higher after Supreme Court ruling on Trump tariffs
US markets edged higher as investors weighed the Supreme Court’s ruling that Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs was illegal and his vows to find “alternatives” to the levies.
The S&P 500 closed 0.7 per cent higher on Friday and the Nasdaq Composite gained 0.9 per cent.
Friday’s move was in stark contrast to the market mood last year when Trump revealed the levies. The S&P 500 tumbled 4.8 per cent on April 3, the session immediately following his “liberation day” tariff announcement and endured a bout of high volatility for more than a week.
The yield on the two-year Treasury note was fractionally higher on Friday, but on par with its level following the release of weaker than expected GDP data this morning and before the release of the Supreme Court ruling.
The dollar was also relatively unmoved but remained about 0.2 per cent lower on the day.
Comment: Trump has lost his favourite margin for manoeuvre
Do not underestimate the scale of the Supreme Court’s blow to Donald Trump. Like a Roman emperor, he has been doling out tariffs with the crook of his finger. One day Switzerland is at 39 per cent; the next, following the gift of a gold ingot and carriage clock, it falls to 15 per cent. Should a foreign leader displease him, as India’s Narendra Modi did when he refused to endorse Trump’s bid for a Nobel Peace Prize, the rate doubled to 50 per cent. In China’s case, the president bowed before its stronger firepower and reduced them from a high of 145 per cent to about 45 per cent.
To Trump, tariffs are far more than an economic tool. They are at the heart of how he conducts his foreign policy. They have also been an effective way of leveraging business deals for his family and senior officials’ offspring. The Supreme Court has now removed almost all of Trump’s discretion. He will get scant compensation by resorting to the Trade Act’s 10 per cent global tariff rate, which is a crude blanket measure that gives him no scope to play favourites. Moreover, these section 122 tariffs expire after 150 days. His other instrument, the section 301 countervailing duties on unfair trade, are litigious and time-consuming. He cannot announce them at a whim on Truth Social.
He has thus lost his favourite margin for manoeuvre. Trump could, of course, simply ask Congress to give him the necessary authorisations. But there are enough dissenting Republicans to make that a poor gamble. Past performance suggests he could lash out in other ways. Given his instinct for unfiltered discretion, the Supreme Court’s ruling could lead to overcompensation in other spheres. US military action is the one area where the executive branch can almost always count on judicial forbearance.