The Supreme Court rules the President exceeded his authority on tariffs under the Emergency Economic Powers Act.

The opinion arrived on a Friday, in the form the Court has been issuing such opinions in for two centuries: a printed text, with footnotes, in two columns, signed by the author and joined by his colleagues. The author was the Chief Justice. The colleagues were Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, Gorsuch, Barrett, and Jackson. The vote was 6-3. The case was Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump, a small toy company in Illinois that had filed in the District of Columbia in the spring of 2025 to argue that the tariffs the President had imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act were not, in fact, authorized by the statute.

The Chief Justice, on behalf of the Court, agreed.

“Based on two words separated by 16 others in IEEPA, namely ‘regulate’ and ‘importation,’ the President asserts the independent power to impose tariffs on imports from any country, of any product, at any rate, for any amount of time. Those words cannot bear such weight. IEEPA contains no reference to tariffs or duties.”

The opinion is, by the standards of the Court, narrow. It does not invalidate the President’s power to set tariffs under any statutory authority. It invalidates his power to set them under this statute, on this legal theory, applied to these tariffs. The administration has used a number of tariff authorities, of which IEEPA is one. The remaining authorities, on the public record, persist.

The court did not weigh in on the question of whether or how the federal government should refund the importers who have, since 2025, paid more than $200 billion in tariffs imposed under the rejected theory. The refund question is, in the trade press, considered a separate proceeding. It will be resolved separately, on a slower clock.

The President’s response, on Truth Social on Saturday morning, was to announce a 15% global tariff increase. The vehicle for the announced increase was not specified. The legal authority on which the increase would rest was not specified. The countries on which the increase would apply were not specified. The post is an announcement.

This is, in the present moment, what the response to a Supreme Court decision looks like. The decision was issued on a Friday. The response was issued on a Saturday. The substance of the response was the volume of the response. The legal text of the response did not exist.

A serious country reacts to a Supreme Court decision in a serious country with a serious legal team and a serious public statement. The administration’s serious public statement is on Truth Social. It contains an emoji.

A small toy company in Illinois, in the meantime, won at the Supreme Court of the United States. The toy company is a real toy company. The Justices are real Justices. The decision is real and binding. The President’s response is on his phone.

Calmly documenting the decline.