Trump angry at Supreme Court over tariff decision

“It’s true that the Supreme Court of the United States cost our country – all they needed was a conviction – hundreds of billions of dollars to our country, and they can’t care less,” Trump said angrily. “They couldn’t care less.”

“And they make me sick,” Trump said, referring to Gorsuch and Barrett.

“They bother me because they’re bad for our country,” Trump said.

The other Trump-appointed justice to the high court, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, dissented along with two fellow conservatives, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas.

majority, in its Learning Resources Inc. Versus TrumpSaid on February 20 that a president does not have the authority to impose unilateral tariffs on imports from most countries under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, as Trump had claimed.

“By virtue of two words separated by 16 others in section 1702(a)(1)(B) of the IEEPA – ‘regulation’ and ‘import’ – the President asserts the independent power to impose tariffs on imports from any country, on any product, at any rate, for any period of time,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority decision.

“Those words cannot carry that much weight,” wrote Roberts, who like Gorsuch and Barrett is a conservative.

Since the decision, the Trump administration has moved to replace the revenue that the US government would have collected if the IEEPA tariffs were left in place.

Trump invoked Section 122 of the Trade Act to impose a global tariff of 10% on imports on February 20, but these tariffs only last for 150 days unless Congress approves an extension.

Earlier this month, the office of US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer launched a trade investigation under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 into nearly 80 countries and economies, including China, Japan, India, Mexico and the European Union.

Section 301 allows the US to impose tariffs on imports from countries found to engage in unfair trade practices.