In a fiery dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas blasted the Court’s decision to block President Donald Trump from deploying emergency tariff powers, calling the majority’s reasoning a glaring distortion of both federal law and the Constitution’s separation of powers.
Thomas made it crystal clear: Congress gave the president the muscle to act.
“As (Kavanaugh) explains, the Court’s decision … cannot be justified as a matter of statutory interpretation. Congress authorized the President to ‘regulate … importation,’” Thomas wrote in his dissent. “Throughout American history, the authority to ‘regulate importation’ has been understood to include the authority to impose duties on imports.”
That language, Thomas argued, isn’t vague. It isn’t mysterious. And it certainly isn’t new.
On Friday morning, in a 6–3 ruling, the Court struck down Trump’s use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to impose sweeping tariffs after declaring a national emergency. The law, passed in 1977, allows a president to regulate or block certain foreign economic transactions in response to international threats — often through sanctions.
The majority claimed IEEPA does not explicitly grant authority to impose tariffs, even during an emergency. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote:
“The president asserts the extraordinary power to unilaterally impose tariffs of unlimited amount, duration, and scope. In light of the breadth, history, and constitutional context of that asserted authority, he must identify clear congressional authorization to exercise it.”
Translation? The Court’s majority says Congress didn’t spell it out clearly enough.
But Thomas — joined in dissent by Justices Samuel Alito and Brett Kavanaugh — saw things very differently. Thomas even penned his own separate dissent to drive the point home.
The majority leaned on separation-of-powers concerns, invoking the so-called “nondelegation doctrine,” which prevents Congress from handing off its core legislative authority to the executive branch.
Thomas dismantled that argument.
He emphasized that the doctrine is narrow — triggered only when Congress hands over core power affecting “life, liberty, or property,” not when it authorizes executive action in foreign trade.
“As I suggested over a decade ago, the nondelegation doctrine does not apply to ‘a delegation of power to make rules governing private conduct in the area of foreign trade,’ including rules imposing duties on imports,” Thomas wrote. “Therefore, to the extent that the Court relies on ‘separation of powers principles’ to rule against the President is mistaken.”
In other words, this wasn’t some rogue power grab. It was squarely within historical practice. Thomas pointed to a powerful historical example: President Richard Nixon.
In 1971, Nixon slapped a 10% across-the-board import surcharge on foreign goods. The move was challenged — and ultimately upheld in United States v. Yoshida International Inc., which interpreted nearly identical statutory language under IEEPA’s predecessor, the Trading with the Enemy Act.
That earlier statute used the same phrase — “regulate … importation.” Thomas underscored the significance:
“The meaning of that phrase was beyond doubt by the time that Congress enacted this statute, shortly after President Nixon’s highly publicized duties on imports were upheld based on identical language.”
And he left little room for ambiguity about Trump’s authority:
“The statute that the President relied on therefore authorized him to impose the duties on imports at issue in these cases,” Thomas wrote, adding that Kavanaugh “makes clear that the Court errs in concluding otherwise.”
Trump rolled out his latest tariff program in April 2025, pitching it as a cornerstone of economic revival — restoring fairness in trade, reviving U.S. manufacturing, and bringing jobs back home. The policy included evolving trade deals with foreign partners, all aimed at leveling the playing field.
Just a day before the ruling, standing in a Georgia steel plant, Trump warned:
“without tariffs, this country would be in such trouble right now.”
After the decision dropped, the president moved swiftly. At a press conference Friday, he announced a 10% global tariff and clarified that the ruling didn’t kill tariffs outright.
The Supreme Court, he stressed, “did not overrule tariffs,” but “merely overruled a particular use of IEEPA tariffs.”
