Congress’s Tariff Power After the Supreme Court Ruling

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The Supreme Court ruled on February 20, 2026, that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) does not authorize presidential tariffs, the taxes charged on imports. The decision removed the legal basis for tariffs President Trump imposed after declaring national emergencies over trade deficits and drug trafficking.

Other laws Congress has passed still allow presidents to impose tariffs. Congress can narrow those powers by rewriting the laws, but a president can veto the legislation. How much tariff authority presidents keep therefore depends on what Congress can turn into law. Refunds of tariffs already collected are a separate question: the government does not send them to shoppers who may have paid more.

The Supreme Court has already ruled

The ruling came in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump. The challenged tariffs addressed two declared emergencies: drug trafficking and trade deficits. The drug-trafficking tariffs covered imports from Canada, Mexico and China; the trade-deficit tariffs, also called reciprocal tariffs, applied to imports from trading partners worldwide.

The Supreme Court upheld the judgment in a second case decided with it, Trump v. V.O.S. Selections, Inc. The Federal Circuit appeals court had ruled that IEEPA did not authorize the challenged tariffs, which were unbounded in scope, amount and duration. The Supreme Court set aside the Learning Resources judgment and ordered that case dismissed because the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia lacked jurisdiction, the authority to hear it. Those different procedural outcomes do not change the shared answer to the tariff question: IEEPA supplied no tariff authority.

Congress’s power and the president’s permission are different

Article I, Section 8 gives Congress the power to levy taxes and duties and to regulate commerce with foreign nations. The government conceded, and the Court said it had to, that the president has no inherent authority to impose tariffs during peacetime. A president’s authority for tariffs like these therefore has to come from a law Congress has passed.

Congress can delegate tariff-setting authority to the executive branch if it supplies an intelligible principle, a standard governing how the authority is used. That is the difference between Congress’s constitutional power and the permission it grants through a statute: a president using the permission has not acquired the power to write the tariff laws.

In March 1934, President Franklin Roosevelt asked Congress for authority to negotiate trade agreements based on reciprocal tariff reductions with other countries. The Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act, signed on June 12, 1934, illustrates the bargain Congress can make. It temporarily authorized presidential tariff increases or decreases of up to 50 percent of the levels set by the 1930 Smoot-Hawley tariff, in exchange for concessions by other countries. The authority was subject to renewal after three years. That approach let the president bargain over rates within a boundary Congress had set.

Why the emergency law did not authorize tariffs

IEEPA lets a president act against an unusual and extraordinary threat that comes wholly or substantially from outside the United States, once the president declares a national emergency over that threat. The threat must concern national security, foreign policy or the economy, and the powers may be used only for that declared threat. Declaring an emergency unlocks the law; it does not settle which actions the law permits.

The statute permits a range of controls over transactions involving foreign property interests, including regulating or prohibiting importation. The Court explained that tariffs differ from those regulatory controls because they raise Treasury revenue from domestic importers. When Congress grants the power to impose tariffs, the Court said, it does so clearly and with careful constraints; in IEEPA it did neither.

Chief Justice John Roberts and five other justices agreed on the result and the statutory reasoning supporting it. Roberts also invoked the major-questions doctrine, which asks whether the president can identify clear congressional authorization for his action, here imposing tariffs under IEEPA. Only Justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett joined Roberts’s principal opinion in full.

Justice Elena Kagan, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, said ordinary statutory interpretation was enough and declined to join the major-questions reasoning. Kagan’s opinion explained that Congress treats the power to regulate trade and the power to levy taxes as distinct. More justices agreed on what IEEPA means than on the doctrine used to read it.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, dissented, interpreting IEEPA to authorize tariffs. Kavanaugh argued that the authority to regulate importation includes tariffs because they are a traditional tool of trade regulation, and because courts had upheld earlier import charges under similarly broad statutory language. He also reasoned that a law allowing the president to block imports altogether should permit the lesser restriction of a tariff. The holding answers whether Congress granted this power in IEEPA; it does not decide whether a different grant would exceed constitutional limits on delegating lawmaking.

Other tariff laws have their own limits

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) says duties under Sections 232, 301 and 201, provisions of other trade laws, remain applicable alongside the general duty rate. The emergency-tariff decision therefore does not make every import duty disappear. The surviving tools differ in what must happen before action and who must make the decision.

Under Section 232, the Secretary of Commerce conducts the national-security import investigation and consults the Secretary of Defense. The investigation report is due to the president within 270 days after the investigation begins, and it must advise the president if imports threaten to impair national security.

After receiving a report finding such a threat, the president has 90 days to decide whether to concur and, if concurring, determine the nature and duration of the import adjustment. If the president chooses action, the initial adjustment must be implemented within 15 days of that decision.

Section 301 gives the U.S. Trade Representative authority to act against foreign practices found unreasonable or discriminatory and burdensome to U.S. commerce, when action is appropriate. The Trade Representative may impose duties or other import restrictions, subject to any specific presidential direction.

Before a president can use Section 201 safeguards, the International Trade Commission must investigate and find that increased imports are a substantial cause of serious injury, or the threat of it, to a domestic industry making similar or directly competing goods. Available presidential responses include tariffs or limits on the quantity imported.

Section 122 addresses specified international payments problems, including large and serious U.S. balance-of-payments deficits or imminent significant depreciation of the dollar. The balance of payments records transactions between U.S. residents and the rest of the world, rather than just imports and exports of goods. A trade deficit in goods alone therefore does not describe the full payments problem named in this law. Its temporary import surcharge cannot exceed 15 percent and lasts no more than 150 days unless Congress extends the period by law.

A February 20, 2026 proclamation imposed a temporary ten percent import surcharge under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, effective February 24, 2026, with specified exceptions. The proclamation set July 24, 2026, as its end date unless it was changed earlier or Congress extended it.

Changing the law takes votes, not just a court victory

Congress can seek to narrow presidential tariff authority by amending or repealing the statutes that grant it. Legislation that passes the House and Senate goes to the president for signature or veto. Overriding a veto requires approval by two-thirds of each chamber. A veto can therefore keep a tariff grant in force after both chambers have voted to change it.

The National Emergencies Act allows Congress to terminate a presidentially declared emergency through a joint resolution enacted into law. Like other legislation, that joint resolution goes to the president, who can veto it, and Congress cannot skip that step. In INS v. Chadha, the Supreme Court held unconstitutional the legislative veto, a procedure that let Congress act without enacting additional legislation, because it changed the law without passing both houses of Congress and being presented to the president for signature. A simple majority is therefore enough only if the president does not veto the resolution; over a veto, ending the emergency takes two-thirds of each chamber.

IEEPA still requires the president to consult Congress before using its powers in every possible instance, to consult regularly while they are in use and to report immediately when they are exercised. Follow-up reports are required at least once during each succeeding six-month period. Section 232 separately requires the president to explain initial action or inaction to Congress within 30 days of the determination.

The House Ways and Means Trade Subcommittee handles tariff and customs matters referred to its parent committee. The Senate Finance Committee’s jurisdiction includes tariffs, import quotas, reciprocal trade agreements and customs. These reports and committees let Congress scrutinize how delegated tariff authority is used; reporting alone does not rewrite the underlying law.

One proposal would make approval the default

The Trade Review Act of 2025, S. 1272, had been introduced and referred to the Senate Finance Committee but had not passed the Senate. That was its status as of October 3, 2026; it is a proposal, not a rule importers or presidents already have to follow.

The bill would let presidential duties remain in effect for no more than 60 days unless an approval resolution is enacted into law. It would also allow duties to be ended by an enacted disapproval resolution, while excluding antidumping and countervailing duties from this mechanism. That would reverse the default: instead of having to pass a law to stop a tariff, Congress would have to pass one to keep it.

Antidumping duties address imports sold below fair value when the statutory injury conditions are met. Countervailing duties offset qualifying foreign-government subsidies, subject to the statute’s other conditions.

The refund question is different from the power question

The Supreme Court’s opinion did not address potential refunds of the IEEPA tariffs already collected. Justice Kavanaugh wrote in his dissent that the United States may be required to refund billions of dollars to importers who paid the tariffs, even though some may have already passed on costs to consumers or others.

Import duties are legally the importer’s debt to the United States. Paying a customs broker does not discharge that debt if the broker fails to pay the government. Because the debt is the importer’s, a ruling on import taxes does not automatically produce a refund for everyone who bought an affected product.

The importer of record is the party responsible for paying the duties and taxes on an import transaction. A designated notify party is someone the importer has authorized through CBP Form 4811 to receive refunds on its behalf.

CBP says it refunds IEEPA duties only to the importer of record or the designated notify party with U.S. bank details in its Automated Commercial Environment (ACE) portal. It does not send direct refunds to consumers who may have paid higher prices because of those duties.

CBP’s refund system is being built in phases and uses the ACE portal for importer or broker accounts, bank information and declarations requesting refunds. Consult the current CBP refund guidance for the entry categories and submission requirements that apply.

The Court of International Trade is a federal court that reviews civil disputes arising from imports and federal transactions affecting international trade. Liquidation is the final calculation of the duties on an import entry; reliquidation recalculates them. An entry is finally liquidated when more than ninety days have passed since liquidation, beyond CBP’s period for voluntary reliquidation.

In an October 6, 2026 filing in Freestyle World, Inc. v. U.S. Customs and Border Protection, CBP confirmed that Phase 3 opened that morning for finally liquidated entries filed by plaintiffs for which the court had ordered reliquidation. CBP notified plaintiffs who submitted a valid importer-of-record number by July 30, 2026, that they could file; it said it would provide additional instructions to plaintiffs who submitted later. That is a limited path for court-covered entries, rather than an invitation for every importer to file in the new phase.

On October 8, 2026, the Court of International Trade certified a class in Freestyle World covering importers of record who paid the challenged duties between February 1, 2025, and February 19, 2026, excluding entities that had separately sued to recover IEEPA payments. The order scheduled a closed conference for October 13 and required the parties to submit a proposed schedule by October 22; it did not set a refund payment date. These are refund-administration proceedings in a different court from the Supreme Court case that decided IEEPA’s meaning.

Refund calculations leave the general duty rate and other applicable duties in place. For an importer, the question is which legal authority supported each charge; for Congress, it is which statutory authorities to leave in presidential hands.