Amid the pending Supreme Court decision on tariffs, President Donald Trump said "$600 billion" in tariffs income was a success and vital to "national security."
He also ripped the "fake news media" for smearing the efforts.
"We have taken in, and will soon be receiving, more than 600 Billion Dollars in Tariffs, but the Fake News Media refuses to talk about it because they hate and disrespect our Country, and want to interfere with the upcoming Tariff decision, one of the most important ever, of the United States Supreme Court," Trump wrote on Truth Social on Monday morning.
"Because of Tariffs, our Country is financially, AND FROM A NATIONAL SECURITY STANDPOINT, FAR STRONGER AND MORE RESPECTED THAN EVER BEFORE. GOD BLESS AMERICA! President DONALD J. TRUMP."
In a New Year's Eve interview on Newsmax, Steve Forbes predicted the Supreme Court will act to unwind Trump's tariffs actions, albeit allowing the income to date to be kept.
Forbes and Trump administration officials have noted Trump may have some alternatives to enforce some form of tweaked tariffs to rebalance global trade and leverage national security.
Those moves have not been stated explicitly by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick or Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, outside of saying the actions are in their hip pockets in the event of a negative result from the Supreme Court.
The Trump administration got a chilly reception in November at the Supreme Court, where a majority of the court questioned Trump's novel use of an emergency powers law to impose worldwide tariffs.
The court, with three justices Trump appointed and generally favorable to muscular presidential power, could find that he exceeded his authority.
A potential majority in a ruling against the tariffs would almost certainly bring together the court's three liberal justices and at least two conservatives.
Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch, both Trump appointees, and Chief Justice John Roberts appeared to be the likeliest to rule against the president.
The Constitution gives Congress the power to impose tariffs, but Trump has claimed extraordinary power to act without congressional approval by declaring national emergencies under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act.
In February, he invoked the law to impose tariffs on Canada, Mexico, and China, saying the illegal flow of immigrants and drugs across the U.S. border amounted to a national emergency and that the three countries needed to do more to stop it.
In April, he imposed worldwide tariffs after declaring America's longstanding trade deficits "a national emergency."
Roberts did not seem sure Trump has that power.
The law has "never before been used to justify tariffs. No one has argued that it does until this particular case," Roberts told Solicitor General D. John Sauer.
Tariffs are taxes on imports, and Gorsuch signaled he was troubled by the idea that Congress could give away its power over taxes to the president.
"The power to reach into the pockets of the American people is just different and it's been different since the founding," when disputes over taxes helped spark the American Revolution, Gorsuch said.
Barrett and Roberts asked questions indicating at least some unease about how the case should come out.
Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Samuel Alito, and Clarence Thomas could support the administration.
Kavanaugh led Sauer in some friendly questioning about 10% worldwide tariffs imposed by President Richard Nixon under a predecessor to IEEPA that used similar language.
Understanding Nixon's tariffs, which were upheld by an appellate court but never reached the Supreme Court, "is real important to deciding this case correctly."
Barrett and Kavanaugh seized on arguments made by the challengers that the president could order a complete trade embargo but not impose tariffs of even 1% under the emergency law.
"Doesn't it seem like it would make sense, then, that Congress would want the president to use something that was ... weaker medicine than completely shutting down trade as leverage to try to get a foreign nation to do something?" Barrett asked.
High-profile cases can take half a year or more to resolve, often because the majority and dissenting opinions go through rounds of revision.
But the court can act quickly when deadline pressure dictates.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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