Beginning in early 2025, tariff rates rose dramatically: the trade-weighted average tariff rate climbed from roughly 2.6% in January 2025 to an estimated 13.4% by January 2026, according to Brookings Institution analysis, driven primarily by sweeping tariffs imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), most notably the April 2, 2025 "Liberation Day" tariffs applied to over 80 countries at rates ranging from a 10% baseline up to 46% for specific countries like Vietnam.
That expansion hit a major legal wall on February 20, 2026, when the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in Learning Resources Inc. v. Trump (consolidated with V.O.S. Selections v. United States) that IEEPA does not actually authorize the president to impose tariffs. Chief Justice Roberts was joined by Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, Gorsuch, Barrett, and Jackson in the majority; Justices Thomas, Kavanaugh, and Alito dissented. This ruling followed a May 2025 Court of International Trade decision and an August 2025 appeals court ruling, both of which had already found the IEEPA tariffs unlawful before the case reached the Supreme Court.
Critically, the Supreme Court's ruling only invalidated tariffs imposed specifically under IEEPA. It left entirely intact the separate, industry-specific Section 232 tariffs (covering steel, aluminum, autos, copper, semiconductors, and lumber), which the Tax Foundation estimates will still raise an additional $635 billion over the next decade on their own. The same day the ruling came down, the administration signed a new 10% global tariff under a different legal authority, Section 122, which has a 150-day statutory limit but doesn't require the same legal justification IEEPA did.
The net effect: total tariff revenue and the effective tariff rate briefly dropped after the ruling before climbing again under the new Section 122 and expanded Section 232 authorities. Brookings estimates the effective rate settled around 9.1% to 11.1% in the months following the ruling, still dramatically above the pre-2025 baseline of roughly 2.6%, even after the Supreme Court's intervention.
On June 2, 2026, the U.S. Trade Representative proposed yet another new layer of tariffs, 10% to 12.5% on imports from 60 trading partners, justified on forced-labor grounds rather than the emergency-powers rationale the Supreme Court rejected. The Tax Policy Center estimates this specific proposal, if fully implemented, would push the average tariff rate to roughly 10.1% and raise an additional $706 billion over an 11-year budget window, on top of everything already in effect.
Tariff supporters generally argue they protect domestic industry and jobs from foreign competition, generate substantial federal revenue that can offset other tax or spending priorities, and give the U.S. genuine leverage in trade negotiations, and point to the Supreme Court's narrower Section 232 carve-out as validating a legitimate, if more limited, tariff authority. Critics generally argue tariffs function as a regressive tax ultimately paid by American consumers and businesses through higher prices, not foreign exporters directly, and that the Supreme Court's IEEPA ruling reflects a legitimate check on executive authority that shouldn't be worked around through a rapid succession of alternative legal authorities. Economists across the political spectrum broadly agree tariffs are, functionally, a tax increase on domestic buyers of imported goods; the genuine disagreement is over whether the resulting revenue, industry protection, and negotiating leverage are worth that cost.
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