Vice President JD Vance on Friday blasted the Supreme Court's ruling that President Donald Trump exceeded his authority by imposing sweeping tariffs on nearly every U.S. trading partner.
In a 6-3 decision, the justices ruled that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act does not authorize a president to impose broad-based tariffs, marking a major rebuke of Trump's use of emergency powers to reshape U.S. trade policy.
"Today, the Supreme Court decided that Congress, despite giving the president the ability to 'regulate imports,' didn't actually mean it," Vance wrote on X. "This is lawlessness from the Court, plain and simple.
"And its only effect will be to make it harder for the president to protect American industries and supply chain resiliency."
He added, "President Trump has a wide range of other tariff powers, and he will use them to defend American workers and advance this administration's trade priorities."
The high court ruling affirms a lower court decision striking down the tariffs and vacates a separate district court ruling for lack of jurisdiction.
Trump has defended tariffs as central to his economic agenda, pointing to market benchmarks he said were reached sooner than critics predicted.
"Our stock market has just recently broken 50,000 on the Dow and simultaneously, and even more amazingly, broken 7,000 on the S&P, two numbers that everybody thought upon our landslide election victory could not be attained," Trump told reporters Friday. "Think of that.
"Nobody thought it was possible to do it within four years. And we did it in one year."
Trump said the ruling still left his administration wide latitude to escalate tariffs using other authorities, citing language he attributed to Justice Brett Kavanaugh's dissent.
"Although I firmly disagree with the court's holding today, the decision might not substantially constrain a president's ability to order tariffs going forward," Trump said, reading from the dissent. "And it doesn't."
Michael Katz ✉
Michael Katz is a Newsmax reporter with more than 30 years of experience reporting and editing on news, culture, and politics.
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