Name: SPECIAL REPORT: Supreme Court invalidates most of Trump's tariffs
Uploaded: 2026-02-20T23:02:04.000Z
Duration: 7 min 24 s
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We're coming on the air because the Supreme Court has just released a major decision involving President Trump's tariff policies and whether the president exceeded his authority with sweeping reciprocal tariffs on other nations, the centerpiece of his economic agenda.

Let's get right to ABC's senior Washington correspondent, Devin Dwyer, who covers the Supreme Court for us.

Kira, this is one of the most significant decisions on presidential power in decades.

The Supreme Court just moments ago, in a 6 to 3 decision authored by Chief Justice John Roberts, invalidated most of President Trump's tariffs.

70% of the tariffs he's imposed so far in his first and second term here have been under the law known as the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.

He claimed it gave him unlimited power to tariff any country at any level for as long as he wants.

And Roberts said the law simply does not give him that authority.

Congress, under the Constitution, has the power to tax Americans, collect tariffs.

There's no mention of tariffs in that law.

And the Supreme Court said he cannot do what he's done.

Let's bring in our ABC News legal analyst and former Trump administration official, Sarah Isker.

Sarah Isker, so, Sarah, you know your thoughts on the reasoning here.

This has been a Supreme Court that has really been shrinking down executive power.

We saw them do this during the Biden administration with his student loan debt forgiveness.

The idea that presidents cannot look back to old vague statutes from Congress to expand their own power.

This, as Devin said, is a huge shift in presidential authority moving forward.

And probably the most important case we've seen from the Supreme Court in decades really putting the ball in Congress's court.

If presidents want to have these big policy initiatives, they will need to work with Congress moving forward.

Chief White House correspondent Mary Bruce is at the White House for us.

Mary, quite a devastating blow to the president's economic and foreign policy.

This is a huge blow to this White House and to this.

President Trump, in the lead up to this decision, had said that ruling against his terrorists would be, quote, devastating and a terrible blow to the U.S.

He has used these tariffs as the main leverage, not just for negotiating deals with other foreign countries, economic deals, but

also as a pressure point in his foreign policy.

He has argued that these tariffs have brought great, great wealth and national security to the country.

The government has collected at least $89 billion in revenue from these tariffs.

They could now be asked to refund all of that.

There is a lot of questions about what happens to the money that has been collected so far and what happens deals that the president has been negotiating based off of these tariffs.

What happens to other issues like for instance, pharmaceutical prices for which he has used these tariffs as a point of leverage to argue new new deals to bring down pharmaceutical prices with other countries.

So it is the ripple effects of this will be tremendous.

What does it mean for the manufacturing here in the US as the president has argued, has been boosted by the threat of these tariffs.

Now, it does seem the president perhaps maybe knew that this decision was coming in very uncharacteristic fash here at the White House just a very short time ago.

The president is actually currently meeting with governors here at the White House, normally something that the press would be allowed to cover.

Instead, the president brought in the cameras and quickly ushered the media out in a way that we don't normally see.

I can tell you this based off of the president's comments in the lead up to this.

While we haven't gotten a reaction from him just yet, he certainly is likely to be deeply frustrated and angry about this decision.

Mary Bruce at the White House, thanks so much.

Well, we are definitely getting reaction if you take a look at the big board.

Let's bring in our business core sponsor, Elizabeth Scholzley.

Elizabeth, we're seeing the impact of this decision in real time.

We are here at the Dow now up positive on this news at last check up about 330 points.

Businesses have been wanting these tariffs to go away.

We know that these tariffs, Kira, are a higher cost that businesses pay when they import their products from abroad.

And we have seen companies all the way from big box retailers like Costco down to small businesses sue the Trump administration in hopes that if this decision happens from the Supreme Court, they can get that money back.

Now as this refund process could kick off, which is likely to be very messy and very complicated.

One thing to keep in mind there is that while some businesses might get money back, that doesn't necessarily mean consumers will.

Consumers who have paid higher prices for goods that have been passed down because of those tariffs have already been paying, according to the Yale Budget Lab, seventeen hundred dollars in tariffs.

Unlikely that that goes right back into consumers POC.

All right, let's bring it all together with our Chief Washington correspondent Jonathan Carle listening to Elizabeth they're complicated, messy, even our Mary Bruce calling this a devastating blow to the president moving forward.

The president did use tariffs to leverage many deals.

What do you think this means now going forward for the president, what he's been trying to accomplish?

JOHN Kira, this is both a monumental decision and frankly, an obvious one.

I mean, it seemed clear from the day that Donald Trump came out and announced his so called reciprocal tariffs on the rest of the world or most of the world, that he was doing something that was beyond his authority as president.

The Constitution very clearly, as this decision cites, the Constitution very clearly gives the power of imposing duties tariffs on the Congress, not to the president.

And monumental because Trump's not just economic policy, his foreign policy has been largely used in tariffs.

He's negotiated more than a dozen different trade deals or frameworks for trade deals.

He often claims that he has achieved peace deals through the use of threatened tariffs, but

he has imposed these tariffs unilaterally without congressional authorization.

The authorization that he was citing was a bill, a law that doesn't even include the word tariffs.

I think it'll be interesting to see how he reacts going forward.

Kyra, Just yesterday in Georgia, he went off on this saying that he's been waiting forever, the Supreme Court's been keeping him waiting forever, that he clearly has the authority.

Now what I'm looking for is the State of the Union address, Kyra, on Tuesday, when those Supreme Court justices, at least some of them, will likely be sitting right there in the front rows.

What he is going to say in his Supreme Court address and will he directly address those justices that have now, in his view, have just defied him?

Well, no doubt he's reworking his speech right now.

John Carl, thank you and thanks to our entire team.

Our coverage, of course, will continue on ABC News Live and ABCNews.com.