U.S. Supreme Court to quickly consider if Trump has power to impose sweeping tariffs

The Supreme Court Building is seen in Washington on March 28, 2017. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court granted an unusually quick hearing on President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs on Tuesday, putting a policy at the center of his economic agenda squarely before the nation’s highest court.

The justices will hear the case in November, a lightning-fast timetable by the Supreme Court’s typical standards, and rule at some point after that. The tariffs will stay in place in the meantime.

The court agreed to take up an appeal from the Trump administration after lower courts found most of his tariffs illegal.

The small businesses and states that challenged them also agreed to the accelerated timetable. They say Trump’s import taxes on goods from almost every country in the world have nearly driven their businesses to bankruptcy. “Congress, not the President alone, has the power to impose tariffs,” attorney Jeffrey Schwab with the Liberty Justice Center said.

Two lower courts have agreed that Trump didn’t have the power to impose all the tariffs under an emergency powers law, though a divided appeals court left them in place.

The Trump administration asked the justices to intervene quickly, arguing the law gives him the power to regulate imports and striking down the tariffs would put the country on “the brink of economic catastrophe.”

The case will come before a court that has been reluctant to check Trump’s extraordinary flex of executive power. One big question is whether the justices’ own expansive view of presidential authority allows for Trump’s tariffs without the explicit approval of Congress, which the Constitution endows with the power to levy tariffs. Three of the justices on the conservative-majority court were nominated by Trump in his first term.

While the tariffs and their erratic rollout have raised fears of higher prices and slower economic growth, Trump has also used them to pressure other countries into accepting new trade deals. Revenue from tariffs totaled $159 billion by late August, more than double what it was at the same point a year earlier.

Solicitor General D. John Sauer has argued that the lower court rulings are already affecting those trade negotiations. If the tariffs are struck down, the U.S. Treasury might take a hit by having to refund some of the import taxes it’s collected, Trump administration officials have said. A ruling against them could even the nation’s ability to reduce the flow of fentanyl and efforts to end Russia’s war against Ukraine, Sauer argued.

The administration did win over four appeals court judges who found the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA, lets the president regulate importation during emergencies without explicit limitations. In recent decades, Congress has ceded some tariff authority to the president and Trump has made the most of the power vacuum.

The case involves two sets of import taxes, both of which Trump justified by declaring a national emergency: the tariffs first announced in April and the ones from February on imports from Canada, China and Mexico.

It doesn’t include his levies on foreign steel, aluminum and autos, or the tariffs Trump imposed on China in his first term that were kept by Democratic President Joe Biden.

Trump can impose tariffs under other laws, but those have more limitations on the speed and severity with which he could act.

Lindsay Whitehurst, The Associated Press