New Delhi: The US Supreme Court Friday struck down the sweeping global tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump last year, terming them illegal and exceeding his “legitimate reach”.
At the centre of the debate is the remit of the President to impose tariffs under a five-decade old law, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). Article I, Section 8 of the US Constitution specifies that the “Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts end excises.”
The Trump administration, according to the US Supreme Court “conceded” that the US President does not have the right to impose tariffs during peacetime, and exclusively relies on the IEEPA to implement the sweeping tariffs first announced in April 2025.
“That ‘the lack of historical precedent’ coupled with the breadth of authority that the President now claims, suggests that the tariffs extend beyond the President’s ‘legitimate reach’,” said the ruling.
The US President imposed a minimum of 10 per cent tariffs on almost every nation in the world last April, labelling them “liberation day tariffs”. By August 2025, the US imposed up to 50 per cent tariffs on Indian goods, partly as a part of the “liberation day tariffs”, and punitive tariffs due to India’s continued purchase of Russian oil.
Earlier this month India and the US agreed to an interim trade agreement that would see New Delhi reduce a number of duties on US goods in exchange for its tariffs to be reduced from 50 per cent to 18 per cent.
President Trump on 7 February removed the 25 per cent punitive tariffs imposed due to Russian oil purchases. Justice Brett Kavanaugh in his dissent to the final ruling used the tariffs imposed on India, as a way to showcase how the duties were able to benefit the US.
The tariffs were imposed due to claims by Trump that American manufacturing had been hollowed out over the years due to the persistent trade deficits with a number of countries.
India maintained a trade surplus of roughly $40 billion in the last financial year. The US is the largest market for Indian goods. The IEEPA in particularly provides the US President a broad authority to regulate a variety of economic transactions following a declaration of national emergency, according to the Congressional Research Service (CRS).
Since its enactment in 1977, US Presidents had declared 77 national emergencies as per 1 September 2025. notes the CRS. Around 46 are still ongoing. The IEEPA has been increasingly used to target non-state actors, but also to regulate certain exports to foreign nations.
However, Trump was the first President to use the law to impose sweeping tariffs on every country from the world. The IEEPA was a result of efforts by the US Congress to limit the emergency authorities of the executive, i.e, the President of the United States of America. In fact, the United States of America, between 1933 and 1977 had been under an emergency, notes the CRS, leading to the eventual adoption of the IEEPA to curtail the Presidency.
(Edited by Viny Mishra)
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