President Donald Trump announced Saturday he would be raising his global tariff rate by 50%, one day after the Supreme Court ruled against the authority he invoked to tax imports.
In Friday’s landmark 6-3 decision, the Court ruled the Carter-era International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) does not allow Trump to implement tariffs. The president almost immediately declared a temporary 10% global tariff, citing a different 1970s law as its authority. The following day, Trump announced on Truth Social he would be increasing the 10% tariff to 15%, which he called the “the fully allowed, and legally tested” level.
“[P]lease let this statement serve to represent that I, as President of the United States of America, will be, effective immediately, raising the 10% Worldwide Tariff on Countries, many of which have been ‘ripping’ the U.S. off for decades, without retribution (until I came along!), to the fully allowed, and legally tested, 15% level,” Trump wrote in his post.
“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 – GREATER THAN EVER BEFORE!!!” the president added.
Trump said his decision to increase the 10% tariff to 15% was based “on a thorough, detailed, and complete review of” the Supreme Court’s Friday ruling, which he called “ridiculous, poorly written, and extraordinarily anti-American.”
Two of the three justices Trump appointed during his first term — Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett — joined Chief Justice John Roberts and the Court’s liberal bloc in striking down the president’s sweeping tariffs. Trump appointee Brett Kavanaugh joined Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito in dissent.
Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, which former President Gerald Ford signed into law, gives the president authority to implement temporary tariffs on foreign nations — at a maximum level of 15% — in order to ameliorate a “large and serious balance-of-payment deficit,” POLITICO reported. Such tariffs can only last for 150 days absent congressional action.
Trump on Friday became the first president to invoke Section 122 in the over 50 years it had been in effect, according to multiple outlets.
“I find that a surcharge in the form of ad valorem duties on certain imports is required to deal with the United States’ large and serious balance-of-payments deficit,” Trump’s Friday presidential proclamation reads. “Accordingly, I impose, for a period of 150 days, a temporary import surcharge of 10 percent ad valorem, as described below, on articles imported into the United States, effective February 24, 2026.”
The White House did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
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