Five Key Takeaways From the Supreme Court Tariff Argument

In one of the biggest cases of the term, the Supreme Court justices are grappling with challenges to President Trump’s sweeping global tariffs. In the short term, the outcome of the case could determine whether the president can continue to rely on a 1977 emergency law to impose tariffs without authorization from Congress. In the longer term, the decision by the court could have profound implications for limits on presidential power.

The justices agreed to hear the case on an expedited schedule. The court typically announces its decisions by the end of June or early July, but a decision in this case could come sooner.

Here are five key takeaways from Wednesday’s argument.

Key conservative justices appeared skeptical of Trump administration’s stance.

During oral argument, Solicitor General D. John Sauer faced sharp, repeated questioning from several of the justices, including some of the key members of the court’s conservative majority. The skepticism voiced by these justices suggested that elements of the president’s tariffs might be in jeopardy.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who is seen as a critical vote, questioned the scope of the tariffs Mr. Trump imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.

“I mean, these are kind of across the board,” Justice Barrett said to Mr. Sauer. “And so is it your contention that every country needed to be tariffed because of threats to the defense and industrial base? I mean, Spain? France?”

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., too, queried the administration lawyer about the president’s authority to impose these specific tariffs. The chief justice acknowledged that the tariffs were used “in dealings with foreign powers,” but he added that “the vehicle is imposition of taxes on Americans,” which he noted had “always been the core power of Congress.”

Justice Neil M. Gorsuch pushed Mr. Sauer on whether there would be any guardrails that would prevent Congress from “just abdicating all responsibility to regulate foreign commerce — for that matter, declare war — to the president.”

Are tariffs taxes? The justices want to know.

The justices repeatedly returned to a central question during the oral argument: Are the tariffs put in place by Mr. Trump a type of tax, or something else?

This is a key point because the challengers argue that the president overstepped his authority by imposing the tariffs. They argue that tariffs are taxes, and they point to clear language in the Constitution that gives Congress the power to tax.

In his opening statement, Neal K. Katyal, the lawyer representing a group of small businesses that challenged the president’s taxes, insisted that “tariffs are taxes” and that the measures “take dollars from Americans’ pockets.” He added that the nation’s founders “gave that taxing power to Congress alone” and that Congress has only delegated tariff powers to the executive branch “explicitly, always with real limits.”

Mr. Sauer, arguing for the Trump administration, rejected the notion that Mr. Trump’s tariffs were aimed at raising revenue. He repeatedly asserted that the president’s tariffs were not taxes, but regulatory tools directed at foreign affairs, an area where the president has broad authority.

“These are regulatory tariffs,” Mr. Sauer said. “They are not revenue-raising tariffs. The fact that they raise revenue is only incidental. The tariffs would be most effective, so to speak, if no person ever paid them.”

Justice Gorsuch homed in on the importance of the taxation power question, noting that “the power to reach into the pockets of the American people is just different.”

The case could have implications for presidential power.

Several justices across the political spectrum appeared concerned about the long-term implications of Mr. Trump’s tariffs program with regard to presidential power.

One key moment during the argument came during an extended back-and-forth between Mr. Sauer and Justice Gorsuch.

Justice Gorsuch said he was concerned that a decision upholding the president’s tariffs could lead to a “one-way ratchet” toward more power in the executive branch and “away from the people’s elected representatives” in Congress.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor listed off some of the tariffs imposed by Mr. Trump. She referred to Brazil, which has faced steep duties as the president looks to protect his political ally, Jair Bolsonaro, from prosecution. She asked whether the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, known as IEEPA, a 1977 law that gives the president broad economic powers during times of national emergency, “gives without limit the power to the president to impose this kind of tax.”

The chief justice also appeared to struggle with the question of executive power in the tariff case. He pointed out that taxes have “always been the core power of Congress,” adding that “to have the president’s foreign affairs power trump that basic power for Congress seems to me to kind of at least neutralize between the two powers, the executive power and the legislative power.”

Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh raised a counterpoint, positing that striking down the tariffs could cut into the president’s ability to deal with foreign affairs. He worried that invalidating the tariffs could take away from the president’s “suite of tools” for dealing with crises. He cited the president’s tariff on India, which he said he understood to be “designed to help settle the Russian-Ukraine war,” a conflict he called “the most serious crisis in the world.” Those tariffs were imposed as punishment for India’s continuing to buy oil from Russia.

The president’s other tariff powers were a main focus.

Some of the discussion focused on other legal authorities that the president could use to impose tariffs rather than using the economic emergency law.

The lawyer for the companies suing the government, Mr. Katyal, argued that the government has plenty of other legitimate authorities that allow it to issue tariffs. He also made the point that the language in those tariff statutes is very different from IEEPA, suggesting that when Congress passed it in 1977, lawmakers did not view it as a tariff law.

One of those alternative authorities, which came up on Wednesday, is Section 122 of the 1974 Trade Act. That gives the president the authority to issue tariffs to deal with balance of payments crises — a similar issue to the trade deficits that Mr. Trump has tried to address. But Section 122 puts strict limits on the tariffs, capping them at 15 percent and allowing them to remain in place for only 150 days.

In his questioning, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. asked whether the Supreme Court should address Mr. Trump’s authority to impose tariffs under authorities beyond IEEPA. That would be unusual, and could indicate that he thinks the administration is in trouble on the central issue in the case.

Mr. Katyal was asked what would happen if the president simply reimposed his tariffs using other authorities. “At that point, we’d have that case,” he responded.

The case could reignite a legal theory long sought by conservatives.

In recent decades, many conservative legal groups and scholars have pushed to revive a legal theory known as the nondelegation doctrine, which limits the power of Congress to delegate its authority to other branches of government.

In the 1930s, the Supreme Court used the nondelegation doctrine extensively to strike down New Deal legislation for granting too much leeway to agencies with insufficient guidance.

The justices have been asked to weigh in on the theory in recent years, including last term in a dispute over whether Congress had given the Federal Communications Commission too much discretion over a fund to support telephone and broadband services for poor people and residents of rural areas. So far, the justices have declined to revive the theory.

That might change with the tariffs case. Here, the groups challenging the tariffs have argued that the nondelegation doctrine prohibits Congress from giving the president the power to tax.

In one exchange, Justice Alito asked Mr. Katyal about his argument that the Trump administration’s tariffs violated the nondelegation doctrine.

“I wonder if you ever thought that your legacy as a constitutional advocate would be the man who revived the nondelegation argument?” Justice Alito asked of Mr. Katyal, who served in the Obama administration.

Mr. Katyal was quick to respond. “Heck yes, Justice Alito. I think Justice Gorsuch nailed it on the head when saying that when you’re dealing with a statute that is this open-ended, unlike anything we’ve ever seen to give the president this kind of power, yes, this isn’t just delegation running riot; this is delegation that’s a legislative abrogation.”