Trump vows to Make America Tariff Again

If President Donald Trump gets his way, his tariffs are here to stay.

He said on Friday afternoon he was pursuing alternate legal authorities to revive his collapsed tariff regime, only hours after the Supreme Court knocked much of it down in a momentous 6-3 decision.

During a 45-minute White House press conference, the president focused his anger on the three conservative justices who sided with liberals on the court: Chief Justice John Roberts, along with Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Neal Gorsuch. At one point, he accused the justices of being "swayed by foreign interests" without offering any evidence.

Then he announced a back-up plan that senior administration officials had hinted was in the works for months. Trump said he was implementing a 10% global tariff through Section 122, a separate legal authority that the Supreme Court decision left untouched.

"There are methods, practices, statutes, and authorities as recognized by the entire court... that are even stronger than the IEEPA tariffs available to me as President of the United States," Trump said, referring to his previous use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA, that was struck down.

Part of the 1974 Trade Act, Section 122 is a parallel track allowing the White House to apply tariffs for up to five months to deal with "large and serious" balance of payment deficits with trading partners. Congress must approve an extension beyond that. Its scope hasn't been tested in court before.

"We're dusting off an old statute here that may not apply," Erica York, a trade expert at the right-leaning Tax Foundation, told Quartz. "Even though this statute does specify tariffs can be used, it's not clear that we have met the requirements in order to use those."

Trump later said he eyed other executive authorities in tandem to revive the dead tariffs. He shut the door on working with Congress on tariff legislation. “I have the right to do tariffs," he said.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the administration planned to launch more Section 232 and Section 301 investigations paving the way for new tariffs under the auspices of national security and trade fairness. However, the process isn't speedy or nimble. "Those take a number of weeks and months to implement," Bessent said at a Dallas Economic Club event.

Indeed, setting up another tariff apparatus that complies with federal law is an intricate, drawn-out endeavor, according to trade observers.

"There's a lot more process and deliberation built into those authorities. Generally with IEEPA, he didn't have to do much deliberation or virtually any process at all," Joseph Maher, a partner and international trade lawyer at Nixon Peabody law firm, told Quartz. "He could on a dime within a moment's notice switch the tariffs on and off, which you saw him do pretty dramatically over the past few months."

The president didn't state on Friday whether he felt obligated to refund U.S. companies at least $140 billion as a result of the decision. He was frustrated the issue of tariff refunds was left in limbo for lower courts to decide.

"They take months and months to write an opinion and they don't even discuss that point," Trump said. "I guess it has to get litigated for the next two years."

In the ruling, the Supreme Court said the president didn't have unilateral authority to impose import taxes. In the majority opinion from Chief Justice John Roberts, it was made clear that tariffs are another form of taxation. The power to tax, the opinion said, belonged to Congress.

It's unclear how the decision will affect the U.S.'s persistent trade deficit, which reached a record high last year as Trump implemented his tariffs on China, the European Union, Canada and more.

Financial markets reacted relatively calmly to the blitz of tariff-related developments. The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 100 points, or 0.2%, as of Friday afternoon. It was a similar trend for the S&P 500, which rose nearly 40 points, or 0.6%.