Trump tariffs imposed under a national emergency law were blocked Friday, Feb. 20, 2026, after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that President Donald Trump lacked authority to impose sweeping import duties without clear approval from Congress.
The decision invalidates the Trump tariffs issued under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, a 1977 statute known as IEEPA, and it narrows how far presidents can push emergency powers into tax and trade policy.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion. Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Brett Kavanaugh dissented. The case tested whether IEEPA’s language allowing a president to “regulate” “importation” during a declared national emergency can be read to include tariffs, and the court said it cannot.
What the court blocked and what stays in force
The ruling covers two broad sets of Trump tariffs that the administration tied to declared foreign threats. One set was framed as a response to drug trafficking, in which the president imposed a 25% duty on most Canadian and Mexican imports and a 10% duty on most Chinese imports, according to the court’s synopsis of the challenged actions.
The other set was the “reciprocal” tariff program announced April 2, 2025, a date Trump labeled “Liberation Day,” which applied a duty “on all imports from all trading partners” of at least 10%, with higher rates on dozens of countries.
Since those executive actions, the Trump administration issued multiple adjustments, including increases, reductions and other modifications. Friday’s decision strikes at the legal foundation for those IEEPA-based Trump tariffs, but it does not automatically resolve every tariff policy Trump has pursued. Reuters reported that some other tariffs have been imposed under different statutes that were not at issue in the case, and administration officials signaled they would look for other legal pathways to preserve as much of the tariff framework as possible.
The Supreme Court also did not decide how refunds should work for importers who paid the Trump tariffs under IEEPA. That question remains open and is expected to be fought in additional litigation, as described in reporting by Reuters and The Associated Press.
Why the Supreme Court said IEEPA cannot authorize Trump tariffs
Roberts grounded the ruling in the Constitution’s assignment of taxing power to Congress. Article I, Section 8 gives Congress the power to “lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises,” and the court described tariffs as part of that taxing authority. The government conceded the president has no inherent peacetime power to impose tariffs, leaving IEEPA as the only legal hook for the Trump tariffs.
The administration argued that IEEPA’s authorization to “regulate … importation” during a national emergency is the practical equivalent of tariff authority. The majority rejected that reading as too broad, too untethered to clear limits and inconsistent with how Congress usually delegates tariff power.
In the opinion, Roberts wrote that the administration’s argument rested on “two words separated by 16 others” in IEEPA, “regulate” and “importation,” and concluded that “Those words cannot bear such weight.” The court also emphasized that IEEPA “contains no reference to tariffs or duties,” and said that if Congress intended to confer that “distinct and extraordinary” authority, it would have done so expressly, as it has in other tariff statutes.
A central part of the reasoning focused on the difference between regulation and taxation. The majority noted that many statutes give the executive branch power to “regulate,” but the government could not identify a statute where that term has been understood to include the power to tax.
The court also pointed to constitutional structure, including the explicit prohibition on taxing exports, and warned that an interpretation that turns “regulate … importation or exportation” into a taxation grant would raise serious constitutional problems.
