The Vice President of the United States, JD Vance, criticized this Friday (20) the Supreme Court decision that overturned the tariff imposed by President Donald Trump based on the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). In a post on the social network X, Vance classified the court’s decision as “illegal”.
According to the vice president, the Supreme Court had disregarded Congress’s intention by including, in IEEPA, the authorization for the president to “regulate imports”. The expression is in the text of the 1977 law, which allows the head of the Executive to adopt economic measures in situations of national emergency. For the government, this authorization would include the possibility of imposing tariffs. The majority of Supreme Court judges, however, understood that the provision does not grant explicit power to create taxes, a competence that belongs to Congress.
“Today, the Supreme Court ruled that Congress, despite granting the president the ability to ‘regulate imports,’ did not actually mean it,” he wrote.
In Vance’s assessment, the court decision hinders the Executive’s ability to protect strategic sectors of the American economy.
“This is illegality on the part of the Court, pure and simple. And its only effect will be to make it more difficult for the President to protect American industries and supply chain resilience,” he said.
Still according to the vice president, the government has other legal bases to maintain the tariff policy.
“President Trump has a wide range of other tariff powers and will use them to defend American workers and advance this administration’s trade priorities,” he declared.
Earlier, during a press conference, President Donald Trump said that the decision was “deeply disappointing” and should generate a long legal dispute over the amounts already collected from the canceled tariffs. At the time, Trump announced the imposition of a new 10% global tariff, this time based on other provisions of American trade legislation. The Supreme Court’s decision specifically invalidated the use of IEEPA as a basis for creating broad, permanent tariffs, but did not prohibit the application of tariffs based on other trade laws.
