Group of small businesses calls on Supreme Court to decide tariffs case

A group of small businesses challenging the tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump in a series of executive orders urged the Supreme Court to provide a definitive ruling on the legality of those tariffs. In a five-page brief filed on Friday afternoon, the challengers encouraged the justices to act quickly, telling them that the tariffs are “inflicting profound harms on” their companies, which are “suffering severe economic hardships as a result of the price increases and supply chain interruptions caused by the tariffs.” “[T]hese impacts,” the challengers stressed, “are ‘not survivable.’”

The filing came less than 48 hours after the Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to weigh in on the president’s authority to impose tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, a 1977 law giving him certain emergency powers. Relying on IEEPA, Trump imposed two sets of tariffs: the “trafficking tariffs,” which target products from Canada, Mexico, and China based on what Trump says is those countries’ failure to stop the flow of fentanyl into the United States; and the “reciprocal tariffs,” which apply more broadly to impose a minimum tariff of 10% (but up to 50%) on goods from almost all countries.

The Court of International Trade held that the tariffs exceeded Trump’s power under IEEPA, and the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld that ruling by a vote of 7-4.

U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer told the justices on Wednesday night that the “tariffs and the ensuing trade negotiations with all our major trading partners are pulling America back from the precipice of disaster, restoring its respect and standing in the world, eliminating decades of unfair and asymmetric trade policies that have gutted our manufacturing capacity and military readiness, and inducing our trading partners to invest trillions of dollars in the American economy.”

Sauer suggested that the Supreme Court fast-track the government’s appeal, so that the court would announce by Sept. 10 whether it would hear the case; if so, the justices would hear oral arguments in early November.

The small businesses agreed that the court should decide now whether Trump can impose the tariffs, but they insist he cannot. If IEEPA were interpreted as broadly as the president suggests, they wrote, “it would constitute an unconstitutional delegation of congressional power far exceeding any delegation that has reached this Court since 1935.”

The small businesses added that “invalidating these tariffs will not deprive the President of the ability to impose other tariffs and negotiate lawful trade agreements under the numerous statutes that Congress has enacted for that purpose.”