The Supreme Court Rejected Trump's Emergency Tariffs. He Signed a 10 Percent Replacement the Same Day.

The Supreme Court ruled on February 20, 2026, that an emergency law did not authorize President Trump's tariffs, and he signed a new 10 percent import tax the same day. Learning Resources, a toy and educational-products company that was a party to that case, and hand2mind had paid more than $700,000 in a later replacement tariff by September 8, their CEO swore. The charge is misuse of powers Congress delegated: Trump committed to keeping his broad import tax before the investigations meant to justify it began, then used one law after another to keep collecting it.

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Section 122 caps a surcharge at 15 percent and 150 days unless Congress extends the period. Trump's proclamation set a 10 percent rate through 12:01 a.m. on July 24, 2026. On February 20, he said investigations over about five months would prepare new tariffs, and his Trade Representative said the new tools would ensure continuity.

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On May 7, two of three trade-court judges held the replacement surcharge invalid, in a ruling that protected only Washington State and two companies. The appeals court stayed the injunction on June 11, finding that the government's likelihood of success favored a stay but reaching no final conclusion on the tariff's legality. Customs reported $31.06 billion in assessed Section 122 duties as of July 5, and the surcharge expired on July 24 with the appeal still pending.

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On March 12, Trump's Trade Representative opened investigations of 60 economies, which supplied 99.4 percent of U.S. imports, for failing to ban or effectively police forced-labor imports. On June 2 it found all 60 economies' conduct actionable and proposed rates of 10 percent and 12.5 percent. On June 24, with comments still open, Treasury Secretary Bessent predicted that successful investigations would restore the earlier tariff rates. He qualified that prediction, and the final tariffs were not shown to equal the old ones.

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Trump directed the new duties on July 23. They took effect at 12:01 a.m. on July 24, exactly when the temporary surcharge expired, generally at 10 percent or 12.5 percent with product exemptions. Learning Resources and other importers sued that day, alleging that the forced-labor findings were reverse engineered to revive the earlier tariffs; the government says each tariff serves only to end the practice it found. After argument on September 30, the trade court ordered more briefing, due October 16, without deciding the merits.

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On July 20, Trump signed three proclamations imposing 50 percent duties on certain Canadian goods under Section 338, a 1930 law. CRS called this the first express presidential use of that law to impose tariffs. He cited Canadian measures on alcohol, dairy and vehicles, which Canada's Prime Minister acknowledged in part. Canada imposed countertariffs on about US$20 billion in American goods starting September 8, and that day Trump signed three import bans covering goods worth about $967 million in 2025 U.S. imports, or 0.3 percent of imports from Canada that year, according to CRS. He also removed some products from the tariff lists and added others; combined additional tariffs could reach 100 percent on certain items, according to CRS.

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The CEO of Learning Resources and hand2mind swore that the companies had paid over $700,000 in the July replacement tariffs by September 8. He said years of searching for U.S. suppliers had failed and that, without price increases and major cost cuts, the new duties would erase most or all expected profits. He warned of possible closures, layoffs or a sale if collection continued. The government still owed the companies refunds on more than $1 million in the rejected tariffs as of September 1, he said.

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From October 2025 through August 2026, the government kept $167.3 billion in customs duties after refunding $125.2 billion. Individual income taxes brought in $2.548 trillion over the same eleven months, so net customs revenue equaled about 6.6 percent of the tax Trump said tariffs could nearly eliminate. These figures cover all customs duties, not only his rejected or replacement tariffs.

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Consumer spending prices rose 3.4 percent over the year to August 2026. Factory employment was up 72,000 from its December 2025 low through September 2026, a real recovery. Neither figure isolates the tariffs' effect. CBO's February model of the tariffs in place in November 2025 predicted higher prices and lower overall employment than without those tariff changes.

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Congress authorized alternative tariff powers, and a President can lawfully use them when their conditions are met.⁹¹⁰²⁵ Justice Brett Kavanaugh, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, wrote in dissent that the Court had in essence concluded that "the President checked the wrong statutory box," and that other laws, Sections 122, 301 and 338 among them, might justify most or all of the tariffs after additional procedural steps.¹ Comparable delegated trade authority survived Supreme Court review in 1976, and the challenged first-term China tariffs survived in 2025, in a case about modifying an existing action.⁴¹⁴²

Trump obeyed the orders: he ended the emergency-law duties, collected the surcharge with the injunction stayed, and let it expire.^4313214 The forced-labor process drew more than 2,000 written comments and more than 100 hearing witnesses.¹⁷⁶ Trump's memorandum records six additional economies adopting forced-labor import bans after consultations and the June findings, progress toward the stated goal.⁶

Meeting each law's conditions would not answer the charge, which concerns the order in which Trump did things.¹⁰²⁵

The Constitution gives the power to tax to Congress, and the Framers, the Supreme Court said in February, "did not vest any part of the taxing power in the Executive Branch."⁴⁴¹ That ruling rejected one law, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, as tariff authority; it did not declare tariffs themselves unconstitutional.¹ The other laws delegate tariffs as remedies for specified problems: balance-of-payments deficits, unfair foreign practices and discrimination against U.S. commerce.⁹¹⁰²⁵

On February 20, before any of the 60 investigations had opened, Trump said of the alternatives: "We were taking in hundreds of billions of dollars. We'll continue to do so."³⁷

The charge is that keeping the tax came first and each law was the means to keep collecting it.³¹⁸⁸ Used that way, a power Congress delegated to remedy a specific problem is misused.⁴⁴¹⁰²⁵ The importers' stronger claim, that the investigations were reverse engineered, awaits a court decision.²⁰²¹

An unsuccessful policy is not an impeachable offense: Madison opposed making maladministration a ground for removal.⁴⁴⁴⁵ Andrew Johnson's lawyers defended a mistaken reading of law and an intended constitutional test, and the Senate acquitted him, one vote short of two-thirds.⁴⁶ Hamilton placed impeachable offenses in "the abuse or violation of some public trust."⁴⁷

The charge here belongs there. Told by the Supreme Court that one law did not authorize his tariffs, Trump made keeping his import tax the commitment and used successive laws to keep collecting it, a deliberate use of delegated powers rather than a legal mistake alone.¹³²⁶ American importers kept paying new tariffs while the government refunded the old ones, the toy company named in the Supreme Court case among them.⁵³⁶¹⁹¹ That use of entrusted power, with those costs, is the case for presidential abuse of public trust.⁴⁴⁴⁷³⁵