Trump calls Supreme Court decision to overturn most of his tariffs a ‘disgrace’

U.S. President Donald Trump learned of the Supreme Court’s decision, which declared a large portion of his tariffs unconstitutional and pushed the Republican administration’s trade policy to the brink, while attending the traditional breakfast with governors from across the country in the East Room of the White House. According to journalists present, someone approached him and handed him a slip of paper that all indications suggest contained a summary of the high court’s decision.

Trump reportedly asked, “We lost, didn’t we?” He then called the ruling a “disgrace.” He went on to criticize the nine Supreme Court justices and warned that he has “a plan B” to circumvent the effects of the ruling on his trade policy, built on tariffs arbitrarily imposed on dozens of trading partners and now declared illegal.

On this occasion the vote was 6-3, but for once it did not reflect the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority, unprecedented since the 1930s. After the blow, Trump responded to a question from North Carolina Governor Josh Stein about recovery aid following Hurricane Helene, which devastated the state in September 2024. The usually loquacious U.S. President offered a brief answer, according to witnesses, and said he needed to retire to study the landmark ruling. The meeting was thus abruptly canceled.

Trump had been pressuring the Supreme Court justices, directly and indirectly, for weeks not to reach the decision they ultimately made, with Chief Justice John Roberts, liberal Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor, and conservative Justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett voting in favor. Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Brett Kavanaugh voted against, with Kavanaugh writing in his dissenting opinion that the ruling would be a “disaster” for the American economy.

The ruling does not specify the consequences of declaring the tariff policy unconstitutional, beyond stating that Trump should have consulted the U.S. Congress for such a far-reaching decision. The hearing for the case was held last November, and the judges’ skepticism regarding the White House’s decision to invoke the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) was already evident. Despite these indications, the ruling landed like a bombshell in Washington on Friday.

Everyone in the U.S. Capital is now waiting to learn what plans the Trump administration has in place to circumvent the effects of the Supreme Court’s decision. The Republican, who just this week declared that without the tariffs the country would be “lost,” has called an emergency press conference where he is expected to offer details on what he intends to do now that the same court that has shown a strong tendency to rule in his favor has dealt a fatal blow to his trade policy. $150 billion in trade tariff revenue collected in the last year is now at risk.

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