Trump says he’ll raise tariffs to 15 percent after Supreme Court ruling

 

President Donald Trump said Saturday that he wants a global tariff of 15%, up from 10% he had announced a day earlier after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down many of the far-reaching taxes on imports that he had imposed over the last year.

Trump’s announcement on social media was the latest sign that, despite the court’s check on his powers, the Republican president still intends to ratchet up tariffs in an unpredictable way. Tariffs have been his favorite tool for rewriting the rules of global commerce and applying international pressure.

The court’s decision on Friday struck down tariffs that Trump had imposed on nearly every country using an emergency powers law. Trump now said he will use a different, albeit more limited, legal authority.

He’s already signed an executive order enabling him to bypass Congress and impose a 10% tax on imports from around the world, starting on Tuesday, the same day as his State of the Union speech. However, those tariffs are limited to 150 days unless they are extended legislatively.

The White House did not immediately respond to a message inquiring when the president would sign an updated order to peg the tariffs at 15%.

He wrote on social media that he was making the announcement “based on a thorough, detailed, and complete review of the ridiculous, poorly written, and extraordinarily anti-American decision on Tariffs issued yesterday.”

By a 6-3 vote, the justices ruled that it was unconstitutional for Trump to unilaterally set and change tariffs because the power to tax lies with Congress.

In addition to the temporary tariffs that Trump wants to set at 15%, the president said Friday that he was also pursuing tariffs through other sections of federal law, which require an investigation by the Commerce Department.

He wrote on Saturday that “during the next short number of months, the Trump Administration will determine and issue the new and legally permissible Tariffs, which will continue our extraordinarily successful process of Making America Great Again.”

After the Supreme Court decision, Trump made an unusually personal attack on the justices who ruled against him in a 6-3 vote, including two of those he appointed during his first term, Justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett. Trump, at a news conference on Friday, said that the situation is “an embarrassment to their families.”

He was still seething Friday night, posting on social media, complaining about Gorsuch, Coney Barrett, and Chief Justice John Roberts, who ruled with the majority and wrote the majority opinion. On Saturday morning, Trump issued another post declaring that his “new hero” was Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who wrote a 63-page dissent. He also praised Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, who were in the minority, and said of the three dissenting justices: “There is no doubt in anyone’s mind that they want to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

Tariffs have been central to Trump’s economic policies, which he has said address a host of ills, from reviving trade imbalances and reviving U.S. manufacturing to forcing other nations to action, whether it be stepping up efforts to combat drug trafficking or ceasing hostilities with each other.

He also regularly claimed, despite evidence to the contrary, that foreign governments would pay the tariffs, not American consumers and businesses.

Federal data shows the Treasury had collected more than $133 billion from the import taxes the president has imposed under the emergency powers law as of December, and Trump has made many promises about what that money might go toward, such as paying down the national debt and sending dividend checks to taxpayers. The Supreme Court decision did not address what happens to the funds that have already been collected from tariffs.

Democrats spoke out quickly on Trump’s new tariff threat. Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee accused Trump of “pickpocketing the American people” with his newly announced higher tariff.

“A little over 24 hours after his tariffs were ruled illegal, he’s doing anything he can to make sure he can still jack up your costs,” they wrote on social media.

California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Trump nemesis, added that “he does not care about you.”

While the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling on Friday against President Donald Trump's use of tariffs marks a clear setback for his use of trade levies as an economic weapon, analysts say it offers little immediate relief for the global economy.

Instead, they expect another bout of activity-crimping confusion combined with near-certainty that Trump will seek other means to replace the raft of global tariffs now struck down as unlawful.

In the meantime, a long list of uncertainties remains -including what new tariffs Trump will seek to impose, whether the funds from the annulled levies will have to be refunded, and whether territories that entered deals with the U.S. to mitigate their impact will see those pacts reopened for review.

Responding to the ruling, Trump announced new global tariffs of 10% for an initial 150-day period and acknowledged it was not clear if or when there would be any refunds.

"In general, I think it will just bring in a new period of high uncertainty in world trade, as everybody tries to figure out what the U.S. tariff policy will be going forward," said Varg Folkman, analyst at the European Policy Centre think tank.

"In the end, it's going to look pretty much the same."

Economists at ING bank agreed: "The scaffolding has come down, but the building remains under construction. No matter how today's ruling reads, tariffs are here to stay."

Friday's ruling concerns only the tariffs launched by Trump based on the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA, intended for national emergencies. So far, they are estimated to have brought in over $175 billion in funds.

By itself, the ruling chops the trade-weighted average U.S. tariff almost in half from 15.4% to 8.3%, trade policy monitor Global Trade Alert estimated.

For those countries with higher U.S. tariff levels, the change is more dramatic. For China, Brazil, and India, it will mean double-digit percentage point cuts, albeit to still-high levels.

BILATERAL DEALS WITH US COULD NOW 'UNRAVEL'

Yet no one expects this to remain the status quo: the Trump administration has served notice long before the ruling that it can and will use other legal vehicles to reimpose tariffs.

At the same time, the couple of dozen countries that entered bilateral deals with the U.S. to set tariffs and, in some cases, invest in the United States, will now assess whether the Supreme Court ruling gives them leverage to renegotiate.

The lawmakers who must ratify the European Union's pact with the United States will do that as soon as Monday, said Bernd Lange, chair of the trade committee of the European Parliament.

"The era of unlimited, arbitrary tariffs ... might now be coming to an end," Lange said on X. "We must now carefully evaluate the ruling and its consequences."

Britain meanwhile, expects its privileged trading position with the United States to continue, the government said on Friday, of the baseline 10% tariff it agreed with Washington.

Indeed, many countries were learning to live with Trump's tariffs, the bulk of which were being shouldered by Americans, according to a Federal Reserve Bank of New York report released this month.

In the most recent update of its regular World Economic Outlook, the International Monetary Fund forecast global growth at a "resilient" 3.3% in 2026.

China even reported a record trade surplus of nearly $1.2 trillion in 2025, led by booming exports to non-U.S. markets as its producers adapted to the Trump onslaught.

Thus, some countries may choose to stick with their existing bilateral deals with the U.S. rather than "inviting the kind of uncertainty we saw in the spring in 2025," EPC's Folkman said of the chaos caused by Trump's so-called "reciprocal" tariffs.

Conversely, Niclas Poitiers, research fellow at the economic think tank Bruegel, noted there were a lot of political question marks over the EU-U.S. trade deal, in which Europe was seen to have backed down and gotten the short end of the stick.

"There could be circumstances in which the deal unravels," he noted.

Update for suppliers: yesterday's Supreme Court ruling striking down Trump's tariffs was not the relief it appeared to be.

Within hours, the administration moved to replace the invalidated tariffs under separate legal authority — first announcing a blanket 10% global tariff, then raising it to 15% effective immediately. More country-specific tariffs are reportedly in the works over the coming months.

Here's where things stand for suppliers right now:
→ A 15% baseline tariff now applies globally under a different legal framework
→ China faces a combined rate of approximately 35% (the new 15% plus a 25% duty that survived the ruling)
→ Sector-specific tariffs on autos, auto parts, and semiconductors remain in place
→ Further tariff adjustments are expected as the administration pursues additional "legally permissible" pathways

The bottom line: the legal mechanism changed, but the tariff pressure didn't — it intensified. Suppliers who were hoping for a reset need to recalibrate. This is a volatile environment that rewards flexibility over fixed assumptions.

Review your cost structures, pressure-test your contracts, and stay close to your trade counsel. The rules are changing fast.

After less than just one day, the US's brand new Section 122 global tariffs have been jacked up to 15% from 10%!

Where has predictability and stability gone in international trade?

Clearly angered by the US Supreme Court’s decision yesterday holding that he did not have the authority to impose tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) through which the US collected at least $ 130 billion USD, the US president announced a mere hours after the decision was released that, pursuant to Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, he was imposing a 10% tariff on all countries on top of any existing tariffs.

Section 122 tariffs are temporary and require approval from Congress to remain after 150 days.

But today, the US president decided that a 10% global tariff was not enough, and upped the global tariff to 15%, claiming that the US Supreme Court’s decision was “ridiculous” and "Anti-American" and that other countries have been “ripping” the US off for decades. No further justification was provided.

According to the president, these new tariffs are “legally permissible”.

Section 122 authorizes the president to impose temporary import surcharges if he determines that the US faces “fundamental international payments problems.” In this regard, the White House points particularly to "a large and serious balance-of-payments deficit."

Expect swift legal challenges to be made in opposition to the new Section 122 tariffs.

Goods coming into the US from Canada or Mexico that are compliant with the USMCA (CUSMA, T-MEC) free trade agreement are exempt from the Section 122 tariffs.