After the Supreme Court docket heard arguments within the case in November, Trump stated he would contemplate alternate options if it dominated towards him on tariffs, telling reporters that “we’ll should develop a ‘recreation two’ plan”.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and different administration officers stated the USA would invoke different authorized justifications to retain as a lot of Trump’s tariffs as potential.
Amongst others, these embrace a statutory provision that allows tariffs on imported items that threaten US nationwide safety and one other that permits retaliatory actions, together with tariffs towards buying and selling companions that the Workplace of the US Commerce Consultant determines have used unfair commerce practices towards American exporters.
None of those alternate options provided the pliability and blunt-force dynamics that IEEPA supplied Trump, and should not be capable of replicate the total scope of his tariffs in a well timed style.
Trump’s potential to impose tariffs instantaneously on any buying and selling companion’s items below the aegis of some type of declared nationwide emergency raised his leverage over different international locations.
It introduced world leaders scrambling to Washington to safe commerce offers that always included pledges of billions of {dollars} in investments or different gives of enhanced market entry for US corporations.
However Trump’s use of tariffs as a cudgel in US overseas coverage has succeeded in antagonising quite a few international locations, together with these lengthy thought-about among the many closest US allies.
IEEPA traditionally had been used for imposing sanctions on enemies or freezing their belongings, to not impose tariffs. The regulation doesn’t particularly point out the phrase tariffs.
Trump’s Justice Division had argued that IEEPA permits tariffs by authorising the president to “regulate” imports to deal with emergencies.
The Congressional Price range Workplace has estimated that if all present tariffs keep in place, together with the IEEPA-based duties, they might generate about US$300 billion yearly over the following decade.
Whole US web customs obligation receipts reached a file US$195 billion in fiscal 2025, which ended on Sep 30, based on US Treasury Division knowledge.
On Apr 2, on a date Trump labeled “Liberation Day”, the president introduced what he referred to as “reciprocal” tariffs on items imported from most US buying and selling companions, invoking IEEPA to deal with what he referred to as a nationwide emergency associated to US commerce deficits, although the USA had already run commerce deficits for many years.
In February and March of 2025, Trump invoked IEEPA to impose tariffs on China, Canada and Mexico, citing the trafficking of the often-abused painkiller fentanyl and illicit medication into the USA as a nationwide emergency.
Trump has wielded his tariffs to extract concessions and renegotiate commerce offers, and as a weapon to punish international locations that draw his ire on non-trade political issues.
These have ranged from Brazil’s prosecution of former president Jair Bolsonaro, India’s purchases of Russian oil that assist fund Russia’s warfare in Ukraine, and an anti-tariffs advert by Canada’s Ontario province.
IEEPA was handed by Congress and signed by Democratic President Jimmy Carter. In passing the measure, Congress positioned extra limits on the president’s authority in comparison with a predecessor regulation.
The circumstances on tariffs earlier than the justices concerned three lawsuits.
The Washington-based US Court docket of Appeals for the Federal Circuit sided with 5 small companies that import items in a single problem, and the states of Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, Oregon and Vermont in one other.
Individually, a Washington-based federal choose sided with a family-owned toy firm referred to as Studying Sources.
