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On Friday, the Supreme Court of the United States struck down the President’s global tariff policy, ruling it unconstitutional. The ruling comes three months after the Trump administration rolled back tariffs on coffee.
As Lindsay Whitehurst reports for the AP, the justices ruled 6-3 that “tariffs that Trump imposed under an emergency powers law were unconstitutional,” saying that taxation power belongs to Congress. The U.S. Department of the Treasury had collected $133 billion from tariffs as of the end of December. It remains unclear what will happen to that money or if companies might be refunded.
“The Court says nothing today about whether, and if so how, the Government should go about returning the billions of dollars that it has collected from importers,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in his dissent. Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas joined him in the minority opinion.
Trump called the ruling “incorrect” and said he would impose a new global 10% tariff. He was “absolutely ashamed” of the justices who voted against his agenda. On Saturday, he said he wanted to impose a 15% tariff on global goods, up from the 10% he had announced the day before.
Early into his second term, Trump imposed tariffs on nearly all imported goods, including coffee. Tariffs, which ranged from 10% to 50%, completely upended the industry. It was arguably the biggest news story of 2025, raising costs for companies and prices for consumers and redefining how green buyers sourced and sold coffee.
This story is actively unfolding, and we hope to have more to report to you in the coming weeks.
Read more on the final nail in the tariff coffin from the Associated Press here.
Photo by Ian Hutchinson on Unsplash
