WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court will hear one of the first major cases of President Donald Trump’s second term Wednesday, when the administration defends the president’s emergency tariffs that American small business owners say are upending their livelihoods.
The question at the heart of the case is whether Trump can authorize sweeping tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA — the first time a president has used the statute to impose taxes on imports.
The suit, which challenges the bounds of Trump’s presidential power, is the first of the administration’s appeals to the high court to be fully argued on its merits. The justices have so far addressed Trump’s numerous appeals on other issues on what is known as the shadow docket, a fast track to make a decision without full arguments.
The president initially said he would attend the arguments in person but has since changed course and will go to a business forum in Miami Wednesday.
The high court convenes at 10 a.m. Eastern and live audio of the arguments is posted on the court’s website.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said he plans to attend the arguments, “hopefully in the front row (to) have a ringside seat,” he told Fox News’ Jesse Watters Monday.
The tariff case is “one for the ages,” said Michael McConnell, professor and faculty director of the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School and member of the legal team representing the small businesses challenging Trump’s tariffs.
“The president has important powers that come directly from the Constitution, but he has no power to impose taxes on American citizens without the authorization of Congress, and tariffs are taxes on American importers,” said McConnell, who sat on the bench of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit from 2002 to 2009.
“IEEPA simply does not apply here,” he told reporters during an Oct. 28 virtual press conference. “It is a statute about imposing various forms of sanctions, economic sanctions, on countries with whom we are in conflict. It has nothing to do with imposing taxes on Americans for engaging in perfectly lawful trade with friendly nations.”
Tariffs a ‘terrible and unsustainable weight’
Victor Schwartz, founder and president of VOS Selections, a family-owned wine and spirits importer in business for four decades, said Trump’s tariff policy is an “existential threat.”
Schwartz is the lead plaintiff in one of two consolidated cases brought by small business owners and Democratic state attorneys general to challenge the duties that can range from 10% to 50%, depending on the product’s origin.
“These tariffs threaten the very existence of small businesses like mine, making it difficult to survive, let alone grow,” Schwartz told reporters during the Oct. 28 virtual press call.
“Let me be clear, Americans are paying these tariffs, not foreign entities, and the tariffs are a terrible and unsustainable weight. We have to pay tariffs immediately at the port of entry, and we don’t see revenue from those products for at least five or six months,” Schwartz said.
Schwartz said he and his daughter, with whom he runs the business, can no longer import wines from South Africa, as tariffs on products from that country are set at 30%.
Other businesses that joined Schwartz on the lawsuit include a Utah-based plastics producer, a Virginia-based children’s electricity learning kit maker, a Pennsylvania-based fishing gear company and a Vermont-based women’s cycling apparel company.
Arizona, Colorado, Maine, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico and Oregon were among states, led by Democratic state attorneys general, that also sued.
The U.S. Court of International Trade and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit sided with the plaintiffs in finding Trump’s IEEPA tariffs unconstitutional.
The justices will also hear from two Illinois-based toy companies who, in a separate case, challenged Trump’s emergency tariffs. Learning Resources Inc. and hand2mind manufacture most of their educational toys in China, Taiwan, South Korea, Vietnam, Thailand and India. Imports from those countries are taxed anywhere from 15% to above 50%, and in the case of China have been unpredictable.
Trump says ‘country is wealthy again’
Trump told reporters Sunday aboard Air Force One that the case is “one of the most important decisions in the history of our country.”
In an interview with the CBS show “60 Minutes” that aired Sunday night, Trump said the economy “will go to hell” if the high court invalidates his emergency tariffs.
“Because of tariffs, our country is wealthy again,” the president told CBS correspondent Norah O’Donnell, arguing his use of tariffs as a negotiation tool will yield billions of dollars in investment in the United States from other countries. Many of the framework trade deals Trump has announced, including with the European Union, South Korea and Japan, are not yet finalized.
The government has so far collected $195 billion this year in customs duties at the end of September, according to a U.S. Treasury monthly statement.
In a September filing asking the Supreme Court to expedite the case, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent wrote the U.S. would face “catastrophic” financial consequences, up to $1 trillion, if the emergency tariffs were overturned.
In the same filing, U.S. Solicitor General John Sauer argued the import taxes are Trump’s “most significant economic and foreign-policy initiative … which President Trump has determined are necessary to rectify America’s country-killing trade deficits and to stem the flood of fentanyl across our borders.”
The administration is facing pushback on those arguments.
Scott Lincicome, senior fellow at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, said a ruling against the tariffs “would not lead to financial ruin, as the administration has said.”
“The government also claims that ‘With tariffs, we are a rich nation. Without tariffs, we are a poor nation,’ — except studies of the fiscal trajectory of the United States with both the IEEPA tariffs, and without, show that we are drowning in debt either way,” Lincicome told reporters at the late October press briefing.
Cato filed a brief in the case arguing against the tariffs.
Some Republicans break ranks
The case has attracted nearly two dozen friend-of-the-court briefs urging the justices to deem Trump’s IEEPA tariffs illegal, including one signed by hundreds of Democrats in Congress and one Republican, Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.
The lawmakers argued IEEPA “contains none of the hallmarks of legislation delegating tariff power to the executive, such as limitations tied to specific products or countries, caps on the amount of tariff increases, procedural safeguards, public input, collaboration with Congress, or time limitations.”
In the days leading up to the oral arguments, four Republican senators broke ranks to join Democrats in passing joint resolutions ending Trump’s emergency declarations triggering tariffs.
One of the bills, passed Oct. 28, targeted Trump’s emergency declaration that led to 50% tariffs on Brazilian goods, including that nation’s major export: coffee. The symbolic bills are not expected to be taken up in the GOP-led House, but mark a shift from when Senate Republicans blocked a similar measure in April.
In its Supreme Court filing, Cato argued the administration’s reading of IEEPA “not only stretches the text beyond recognition but also undermines the Framers’ designs for the separation of powers. Accepting the government’s theory would mean that Congress, through ambiguous text and silence, can transfer sweeping legislative power to the President — a result this Court has cautioned against.”
In an amicus brief supporting Trump’s trade strategy, the America First Policy Institute, a conservative think tank heavily involved in Trump’s second presidential campaign, defended the tariffs as a “pillar of the America-first policies of the current administration” and argued the president has unilateral power to impose the taxes under a Depression-era law.
Executive orders and more
Trump began imposing tariffs under IEEPA through a series of executive orders and proclamations in February and March on products from China, Canada and Mexico, declaring these countries responsible for illegal fentanyl smuggling into the U.S.
The president escalated the emergency tariffs over the following months on goods from around the globe, declaring trade imbalances a national emergency. In addition to a baseline 10% global tariff, Trump specifically targeted countries that export more goods to the U.S. than they import from U.S. suppliers.
As recently as late August, Trump imposed an extra 25% tariff on goods imported from India, bringing the total tariffs on Indian products to 50%, because of the country’s usage of Russian oil.
In early August, Trump slapped a 40% tax on all Brazilian goods after he disagreed with the country’s prosecution of its former right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro for plotting a coup to remain in power in 2022.
This story was first published Nov. 4, 2025 by States Newsroom.
