When One Door Closes, Three Others Open
The Supreme Court struck down President Trump's tariffs Thursday in a 6-3 ruling, declaring them illegal under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, according to the Court's majority opinion. Within hours, Trump signed a new executive order imposing a 10% "global tariff" under different legal authority. The effective tariff rate dropped from 16.9% to 9.1%, then climbed right back up, data from the Yale Budget Lab shows.
This is how judicial review dies: not with a bang, but with a statute shuffle.
The Architecture of Redundancy
Chief Justice John Roberts authored the majority opinion invalidating Trump's "Liberation Day" tariffs, which had placed a 10% levy on all imports under IEPPA. The statute, Roberts wrote, grants emergency powers for targeted sanctions, not blanket trade policy. Legal scholars called it a significant check on executive overreach. Trump called it irrelevant.
"The Supreme Court decision is incorrect, but it doesn't matter because we have very powerful alternatives," Trump said Thursday afternoon, as reported by White House press pool. He wasn't bluffing.
The new executive order invokes Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, which allows temporary tariffs for balance-of-payments reasons, according to the text of the order. That authority runs for 150 days and caps at 15%, but Trump also announced "investigations" into sector-specific tariffs, opening the door to permanent levies under different provisions. A 50% tariff on steel and aluminum products remains completely unaffected by the Supreme Court ruling, imposed under yet another statute.
Data from the Yale Budget Lab shows the practical impact: if the Court had upheld the IEPPA tariffs, the nation's effective tariff rate would have stayed at 16.9%. After the ruling, it drops to 9.1%. After Trump's new order, it climbs back to roughly 10%. The Supreme Court closed one door. Trump walked through three others before the ink dried on the opinion.
Constitutional Whack-a-Mole
Trade law in the United States operates like a house with too many keys. Congress has granted presidents tariff authority under at least six major statutes, each with different triggers, duration limits, and procedural requirements, according to Congressional Research Service documentation. IEPPA requires a declared national emergency. Section 122 requires balance-of-payments concerns. Section 232 requires national security threats. Section 301 requires unfair trade practices.
The triggers are vague. The definitions are flexible. And the authorities overlap enough that striking down one rarely matters.
Trump understood this vulnerability months ago. "If we don't win that case, we will be a weakened, troubled financial mess for many, many years to come," he said in October, referring to the legal challenge working its way to the Supreme Court. But his administration had already built redundancy into the system, layering tariffs under multiple statutes so that losing one battle wouldn't lose the war.
After Thursday's ruling, Trump said he was "ashamed of certain members of the court," according to his public statement. The comment reveals the deeper tension: from his perspective, judicial review itself is the problem. Why should nine justices second-guess trade policy when Congress has already granted the executive branch multiple paths to the same destination?
Who Pays While the Lawyers Argue
Small business owners paid billions in tariffs over the past year, on couches, electronic toothbrushes, raw materials they needed to operate, according to U.S. Customs data. The Supreme Court now says those tariffs were illegal. Senator Elizabeth Warren called for refunds in a statement released Thursday. Business owners told CBS News the ruling "will offer relief."
But experts interviewed by CBS say refunds face "legal and logistical hurdles" and could "take years" to process. Importers must file claims with U.S. Customs, prove they paid duties under the invalidated authority, and navigate statute-of-limitations questions that remain legally murky. The burden of proof falls on businesses, not the government.
The human cost is concrete: a furniture importer bringing in $1 million worth of couches paid $100,000 in tariffs under the now-invalidated IEPPA authority, money that came directly from operating capital or was passed to consumers through higher prices. That same importer now faces another $100,000 bill under the new Section 122 tariff, even while waiting years to potentially recover the first payment. For a business operating on typical retail margins of 2-4%, according to industry data, a $200,000 tariff burden on $1 million in inventory can mean the difference between profitability and closure.
Meanwhile, Trump's new 10% tariff is already in effect. Businesses that just won a Supreme Court case now face the same costs under a different name. The ruling may eventually deliver billions in refunds, but those refunds will arrive long after companies have absorbed the damage, adjusted prices, or closed entirely.
This is the hidden cost of redundant authority: businesses lose even when they win. The years spent litigating one tariff statute don't prevent the president from invoking another. Legal victory becomes a Pyrrhic prize, technically correct, practically meaningless, and expensive to claim.
The Pattern Beneath the Chaos
The tariff shell game fits a broader pattern emerging across federal systems. The system's architecture prevents it from responding to the problem it's supposed to solve. Judicial review is meant to check executive overreach, but when Congress has granted overlapping authorities, courts can only strike down one path at a time. By the time litigation concludes, the executive has already pivoted to the next statute.
The Supreme Court ruling will reshape prices for some goods. It will affect tax bills for corporations. It may eventually force a reckoning with how much tariff authority presidents should hold. But none of that changes the immediate reality: the tariffs are still here, just wearing a different legal costume.
What Accountability Looks Like Now
Trump announced new "investigations" Thursday as part of his plan to impose additional sector-specific tariffs, according to the White House announcement. Each investigation opens another procedural door, another statutory path, another round of litigation that will take years to resolve. The Supreme Court can strike down tariffs faster than it used to, this case moved relatively quickly by judicial standards. But "quickly" still means months or years, and the executive branch can reimpose policy in hours.
The gap between those timelines is where accountability disappears.