Day after Supreme Court ruling, Trump says he will raise tariffs to 15%

By Dan McCaleb and Brett Rowland
The Center Square

President Donald Trump on Saturday said he would raise global tariffs to 15%. The announcement on social media comes a day after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down his use of a 1977 law to impose tariffs on imports from around the world.

“Based on a thorough, detailed, and complete review of the ridiculous, poorly written, and extraordinarily anti-American decision on Tariffs issued yesterday, after MANY months of contemplation, by the United States Supreme Court, please let this statement serve to represent that I, as President of the United States of America, will be, effective immediately, raising the 10% Worldwide Tariff on Countries, many of which have been ‘ripping’ the U.S. off for decades, without retribution (until I came along!), to the fully allowed, and legally tested, 15% level,” Trump wrote Saturday on social media.

On Friday, after the Supreme Court ruled Trump did not have the authority to enact tariffs under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act, Trump said he would implement 10% tariffs using other laws. He said Saturday he was upping that to 15%.

“During the next short number of months, the Trump Administration will determine and issue the new and legally permissible Tariffs, which will continue our extraordinarily successful process of Making America Great Again,” Trump wrote.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Friday the administration will restructure the sweeping import taxes under other legal authorities.

“This administration will invoke alternative legal authorities to replace the IEEPA tariffs,” he said. “We will be leveraging Section 232 and Section 301 tariff authorities that have been validated through thousands of legal challenges.”

The Supreme Court, divided 6-3, ruled that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act didn’t give Trump expansive tariff powers to tax goods entering the country. Justices Clarence Thomas, Brett Kavanaugh and Samuel Alito dissented. The majority ruled that Trump’s tariffs violated the major questions doctrine, which holds that Congress must speak clearly when it grants significant powers.

“The Framers gave ‘Congress alone’ the power to impose tariffs during peacetime,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority.

Many businesses are seeking refunds for the billions of dollars in tariffs they paid under the 1977 law that the Supreme Court ruled exceeded the president’s authority.