Not surprisingly, the Supreme Court on Friday struck down President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariff agenda, ruling that the White House doesn’t have the authority to act unilaterally under the statute cited. The justices had signaled as much during oral arguments in November, when the solicitor general made the dubious assertion that the executive branch could act to raise revenue without the consent of Congress.

In fact, the Constitution bestows the power to tax on the legislative branch.

Trump responded to the 6-3 decision in typical fashion, calling it a “disgrace” and blasting the majority justices as “unpatriotic.” While his disappointment is understandable, his animosity is misplaced. The decision validates vital principles — particularly the separation of powers, a bulwark against tyranny — and continues this court’s push to ensure that the federal bureaucracy acts within clearly specified legislative guardrails.

It’s the same concept — the “major questions doctrine” — that the justices cited in 2023 to strike down the Biden administration’s effort to unilaterally forgive billions in student loan debt, a decision Trump applauded.

The tariff case involved the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977, which allows a president to take certain steps regarding imports during an emergency. The White House argued that ongoing trade deficits were enough to trigger the “emergency” designation and to give the president the authority to impose punishing duties on goods entering the country from abroad.

A majority of the justices disagreed.

“The president asserts the extraordinary power to unilaterally impose tariffs of unlimited amount, duration and scope,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority. But the law never mentions tariffs, and the solicitor general could identify “no statute” in which Congress has previously said that the language in the law could apply to such levies. Thus, “we hold that IEEPA does not authorize the president to impose tariffs.”

The ruling is sound but likely serves as only a speed bump. Other trade-related laws give the president limited avenues for enacting tariffs to combat unfair trade practices or to advance national security interests. And, sure enough, Trump wasted little time, announcing within hours of the ruling that he would invoke the 1974 Trade Act to impose a 10 percent tariff on all imports. Under the law, the duties will expire after 150 days if Congress doesn’t vote to extend them. But there’s no guarantee that the White House won’t move to get around the limitation.

“If Congress declines to act,” said Clark Packard, a research fellow at the Cato Institute, told reason.com, “the administration could, at least in theory, allow the tariffs to lapse, declare a new balance-of-payments emergency and restart the clock. The maneuver would raise serious separation-of-powers concerns, but nothing in the statute clearly forbids it.”

Trump is unlikely to abandon his effort to use tariff leverage to advance his foreign policy agenda. But Republicans would be better served entering the midterms if the president instead more aggressively emphasized his tax cuts and regulatory reform successes while pushing pro-growth policies that boost private-sector job creation and expand opportunities for the middle-class swing voters who in November will decide which party controls Congress.

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