Bernie Moreno: ‘Outrageous’ Supreme Court Tariff Ruling Handcuffs Ability to Fight Unfair Trade Practices

Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-OH) said Friday’s Supreme Court tariff ruling handcuffs the country’s ability to fight unfair trade that has harmed the American worker.

The Supreme Court ruled that President Donald Trump’s global tariffs are illegal, which delivers a significant legal defeat to the president’s economic policy.

Moreno reacted to the news, saying:

SCOTUS’s outrageous ruling handcuffs our fight against unfair trade that has devastated American workers for decades. These tariffs protected jobs, revived manufacturing, and forced cheaters like China to pay up. Now globalists win, factories investments may reverse, and American workers lose again. This betrayal must be reversed and Republicans must get to work immediately on a reconciliation bill to codify the tariffs that had made our country the hottest country on earth!

Breitbart News Economics Editor John Carney wrote about the ruling:

The ruling is the first time the high court has definitively struck down one of Trump’s second-term policies. In other areas, the court has granted Trump broad latitude to deploy executive power, but a majority of justices said he went too far in enacting his most sweeping tariffs without clear authorization from Congress.

Trump imposed the tariffs in two waves. In February 2025, he placed 25 percent duties on most Canadian and Mexican imports and 10 percent on Chinese goods, citing fentanyl trafficking. Then in April, on what he dubbed “Liberation Day,” he imposed a general 10 percent tariff on imports from nearly all countries and steeper rates on nations the administration deemed trade violators.

Trump declared overdose deaths from fentanyl and persistent annual trade deficits to be national emergencies that justified the new trade policy under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, a 1977 law Congress passed to give presidents tools for responding to foreign crises.

Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh noted in his dissent against the majority’s decision that the refund process for the tariff revenues would be a “mess.”