A sullen and defiant Donald Trump lashed out at the nation’s highest court in a hastily convened press conference at which he slammed two of the three justices he’d appointed as “disloyal” — also claiming they were beholden to “foreign interests” — while vowing to find other ways to levy the import taxes on which he has based much of his domestic and foreign policy.
Speaking from the White House briefing room on Friday, a seething Trump called the 6-3 Supreme Court ruling striking down much of his unilateral tariff policy “deeply disappointing” and said he was “absolutely ashamed” of the Republican appointees on the court who’d failed to back his signature policy.
“They’re just being fools and lap dogs for the RINOs and the radical left Democrats … they’re very unpatriotic and disloyal to our Constitution,” Trump said, employing an acronym indicating that the three conservatives who’d ruled against him — Chief Justice John Roberts, and his two appointees, Justice Neil Gorsuch and Justice Amy Coney Barrett — were “Republicans In Name Only.”
Roberts, an appointee of George W. Bush, has been on the court since 2005, while Gorsuch and Coney Barrett were named to the court by Trump during his first term.
Trump and his aides have expected a negative ruling in the case for months and have been preparing other authorities for taxing imports, but those other avenues are far more limited than the broad powers Trump had asserted for himself.
He announced that he will be invoking one of those statutory authorities — Section 122 of the 1974 Trade Act — to impose a 10 percent levy on all imports going forward and claimed that his administration is also beginning the process to impose other sector-specific tariffs under Section 301 of the same law “to protect our country from unfair trading practices of other countries and companies.”
“We’re immediately instituting the 10 percent provision, which we’re allowed to do, and in the end, I think we’ll take in more money than we’ve taken in before,” he said.
“Just so you understand, we have tariffs. We just have them in a different way, and now they’ve been confirmed by the Supreme Court of the United States … we’ll be taking in hundreds of billions of dollars.”
Though Trump claimed America’s effective tariff rates could be “potentially higher” under those tariff authorities, Section 122 limits the president’s power to impose a global tariff to just 150 days without Congressional authorization. It also does not permit such a tariff to be higher than 15 percent.
At the same time, he suggested that his administration has no plans to refund any of the billions of dollars that were collected under the tariff policies that have now been ruled illegal while complaining that the justices did not address the question of refunds in their opinion.
He asked: “They take months and months to write an opinion, and they don’t even discuss that point … wouldn’t you think they would have put one sentence in there saying that keep the money or don’t keep the money?”
“I guess it has to get litigated for the next two years,” he added.
When pressed specifically on whether the government would honor requests for refunds from importers, he replied: “We’ll end up being in court for the next five years.”
The president’s cantankerous appearance in the White House briefing room came just hours after the landmark ruling from the nation’s conservative-majority high court determined that he could not impose tariffs by invoking the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act, because the Carter-era law didn’t explicitly give him the authority to impose import taxes for any reason.
The ruling does not impact all of Trump’s tariffs, just those brought under the 1970s law. That includes “reciprocal” tariffs on other countries since he announced that policy during an April event on what he’d dubbed “Liberation Day” as well as tariffs specifically imposed on Canada, China and Mexico to stop the flow of fentanyl.
Tariffs imposed on specific sectors, such as aluminum or steel — some of which date back to his first term —can remain in place.
Writing for the court, Chief Justice Roberts said Trump had failed to “identify clear congressional authorization” for the emergency powers he’d claimed.
The president continued his diatribe against the court by opining that the justices had been “swayed by foreign interests and a political movement that is far smaller than people would ever think.”
He also suggested that the justices had been “afraid” of ruling in his favor and “don’t want to do the right thing.”
Asked to explain how the high court had, in his view, been swayed by “foreign interests,” Trump did not offer any evidence for his view but instead suggested that unnamed “people” with “undue influence” have “a lot of influence over the Supreme Court.”
“Whether it’s through fear or respect or friendships, I don’t know, but I know some of the people that were involved on the other side, and I don’t like them. I think they’re real slime balls,” he said.
