Trump Tariff Case Ups the Ante at Supreme Court

The Supreme Court has flirted with a flurry of Trump administration matters in recent months, but the battle over the president's sweeping global tariffs will put the justices directly on the spot over a centerpiece of his economic agenda.

- JESS BRAVIN

President Trump has been on an all-out blitz to expand executive power, including by declaring a series of emergencies on top of policy priorities that he says allow him to bypass normal procedures and take unilateral action. Citing national security, he upended global markets by declaring a trade emergency to impose 10% baseline tariffs on virtually all countries—and more on some nations. He also claimed an opioid trafficking emergency to direct additional tariffs to Canada, China and Mexico.

Across three different courts, 15 judges have weighed Trump's tariff maneuvers—and 11 of them, appointed by presidents of both parties, have found he acted without legal support. The most consequential of those decisions came late Friday from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which rejected the tariffs and gave the president a mid-October deadline to appeal to the Supreme Court before the ruling takes effect.

The White House always expected the dispute to be settled at the high court, and it is betting that the court's conservative majority, one that stands to the right of many lower courts that have ruled against the administration this year, will affirm Trump's sweeping assertion of his own authority.

There are reasons its optimism makes sense.

To date, the administration has sought preliminary relief from the Supreme Court in more than 20 cases in which lower court judges temporarily blocked the White House's plans. In many of them, the high court gave the administration what it asked for, in orders that provided little—if any—explanation.

Often over the dissent of its three liberal members, the court has granted Trump's emergency requests to fire federal officials, deport some classes of immigrants with minimal due process, withhold congressionally appropriated research and education funding and expel transgender service members from the armed forces, among other matters.