The Memo: Trump fumes at Supreme Court justices who knocked down tariffs
by Niall Stanage/The Hill
- 02/21/26 6:00 AM ET
Less than six weeks before the 2020 election, President Trump stepped into the White House Rose Garden to fete his newest Supreme Court nominee.
“She is a woman of unparalleled achievement, towering intellect, sterling credentials, and unyielding loyalty to the Constitution,” he enthused. “Judge Amy Coney Barrett.”
Barrett would duly be confirmed, the third newly minted Supreme Court justice of Trump’s first term. The first had been Neil Gorsuch, back in 2017. At an event to mark Gorsuch’s swearing-in, Trump called him “a man of great and unquestioned integrity … of unmatched qualifications.
That was then, this is now.
On Friday, Barrett and Gorsuch joined four of their colleagues in delivering a decisive 6-3 defeat to Trump on tariffs.
Trump singled out the duo’s role in the decision. “I think it’s an embarrassment to their families, if you want to know the truth. The two of them,” he said.
The president, speaking during a hastily arranged appearance in the White House briefing room, also contended he was “ashamed of certain members of the court,” complained that they were being “fools and lapdogs,” and branded the six justices who had defied him a “disgrace to our nation.”
Such an attack is at once startling and unsurprising.
Trump has repeatedly attacked judges who have ruled in ways that displease him. The targets have run the gamut from lower courts to the Supreme Court.
Last March, he complained, “Unlawful Nationwide Injunctions by Radical Left Judges could very well lead to the destruction of our Country!”
Last May, after the high court blocked him from using the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 as he wanted, the president complained that “The Supreme Court of the United States is not allowing me to do what I was elected to do.”
In the same social media post, he characterized the ruling as one that held that “the worst murderers, drug dealers, gang members and even those who are criminally insane” were “not allowed to be forced out” fast enough.
So, his volcanic reaction to Friday’s ruling was part of a pattern in which he assails dissenting voices, on the bench or elsewhere, any time they resist him. But it was also an indication of what a seismic political setback he had encountered.
The decision struck down many of Trump’s tariffs, finding that the president’s use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) of 1977 was unconstitutional.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that Trump appeared to be reserving for himself “the independent power to impose tariffs on imports from any country, of any product, at any rate, for any amount of time.”
The words within IEEPA that the president leaned on to make such an assertion “cannot bear such weight,” Roberts noted.
Trump can, and almost certainly will, seek to impose or maintain tariffs using other laws and powers — but those too could face legal challenge. Businesses, at home and abroad, will fret about yet another period of tariff uncertainty. And there is the vexing question of whether refunds will be offered for the payments already made, under tariffs now ruled illegal.
The bottom line is that a conservative Supreme Court has pulled out the keystone around which Trump’s whole trade policy is constructed. Tariffs were Trump’s signature policy on that front, and the Supreme Court has, for now, erased many of them.
“It’s my opinion that the court has been swayed by foreign interests and a political movement that is far smaller than people would ever think,” Trump lamented, without offering evidence.
There’s another factor to consider, too. Trump’s views on numerous important topics — from health care to abortion to relations with North Korea — have swung all over the place during his decades in public life.
Yet, his stance on tariffs, and his disdain for the evangelists of “free trade,” have been unusually consistent. He has long held the view that the United States suffers because of unfair trade policies and that tariffs are a large part of the answer.
Footage can still be found of him, in the late 1980s, complaining to Oprah Winfrey on her talk show about how Japanese manufacturers — an American economic nemesis of the time, roughly equivalent to China now — “dump everything” and were “beating the hell out of this country.”
“I’d make our allies pay their fair share,” Trump told Winfrey, apparently referring to higher tariffs.
Trump’s Friday fury is plainly motivated, at least in part, by a Supreme Court to which he appointed one-third of the members, thwarting him for now.
The tensions could flare again on Tuesday, when the justices are expected to attend Trump’s State of the Union address. Trump told The Hill’s Julia Manchester during his Friday briefing that the justices were “invited — barely” to the address and that he could not “care less” whether they come.
It would not be the first example of friction in those surroundings, of course.
Back in 2010, then-President Obama criticized the Citizens United ruling as likely to “open the floodgates for special interests — including foreign corporations — to spend without limit in our elections.”
Justice Samuel Alito, sitting just in front of Obama, appeared to mouth the words “not true” in response.
Obama, of course, had prefaced his criticism of the ruling with a recognition of “due deference to the separation of powers.” He did not suggest the conservative justices had disgraced their families.
The times, and the president, are very different now.
The Memo is a reported column by Niall Stanage.
- 02/21/26 6:00 AM ET
Less than six weeks before the 2020 election, President Trump stepped into the White House Rose Garden to fete his newest Supreme Court nominee.
“She is a woman of unparalleled achievement, towering intellect, sterling credentials, and unyielding loyalty to the Constitution,” he enthused. “Judge Amy Coney Barrett.”
Barrett would duly be confirmed, the third newly minted Supreme Court justice of Trump’s first term. The first had been Neil Gorsuch, back in 2017. At an event to mark Gorsuch’s swearing-in, Trump called him “a man of great and unquestioned integrity … of unmatched qualifications.
That was then, this is now.
On Friday, Barrett and Gorsuch joined four of their colleagues in delivering a decisive 6-3 defeat to Trump on tariffs.
Trump singled out the duo’s role in the decision. “I think it’s an embarrassment to their families, if you want to know the truth. The two of them,” he said.
The president, speaking during a hastily arranged appearance in the White House briefing room, also contended he was “ashamed of certain members of the court,” complained that they were being “fools and lapdogs,” and branded the six justices who had defied him a “disgrace to our nation.”
Such an attack is at once startling and unsurprising.
Trump has repeatedly attacked judges who have ruled in ways that displease him. The targets have run the gamut from lower courts to the Supreme Court.
Last March, he complained, “Unlawful Nationwide Injunctions by Radical Left Judges could very well lead to the destruction of our Country!”
Last May, after the high court blocked him from using the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 as he wanted, the president complained that “The Supreme Court of the United States is not allowing me to do what I was elected to do.”
In the same social media post, he characterized the ruling as one that held that “the worst murderers, drug dealers, gang members and even those who are criminally insane” were “not allowed to be forced out” fast enough.
So, his volcanic reaction to Friday’s ruling was part of a pattern in which he assails dissenting voices, on the bench or elsewhere, any time they resist him. But it was also an indication of what a seismic political setback he had encountered.
The decision struck down many of Trump’s tariffs, finding that the president’s use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) of 1977 was unconstitutional.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that Trump appeared to be reserving for himself “the independent power to impose tariffs on imports from any country, of any product, at any rate, for any amount of time.”
The words within IEEPA that the president leaned on to make such an assertion “cannot bear such weight,” Roberts noted.
Trump can, and almost certainly will, seek to impose or maintain tariffs using other laws and powers — but those too could face legal challenge. Businesses, at home and abroad, will fret about yet another period of tariff uncertainty. And there is the vexing question of whether refunds will be offered for the payments already made, under tariffs now ruled illegal.
The bottom line is that a conservative Supreme Court has pulled out the keystone around which Trump’s whole trade policy is constructed. Tariffs were Trump’s signature policy on that front, and the Supreme Court has, for now, erased many of them.
“It’s my opinion that the court has been swayed by foreign interests and a political movement that is far smaller than people would ever think,” Trump lamented, without offering evidence.
There’s another factor to consider, too. Trump’s views on numerous important topics — from health care to abortion to relations with North Korea — have swung all over the place during his decades in public life.
Yet, his stance on tariffs, and his disdain for the evangelists of “free trade,” have been unusually consistent. He has long held the view that the United States suffers because of unfair trade policies and that tariffs are a large part of the answer.
Footage can still be found of him, in the late 1980s, complaining to Oprah Winfrey on her talk show about how Japanese manufacturers — an American economic nemesis of the time, roughly equivalent to China now — “dump everything” and were “beating the hell out of this country.”
“I’d make our allies pay their fair share,” Trump told Winfrey, apparently referring to higher tariffs.
Trump’s Friday fury is plainly motivated, at least in part, by a Supreme Court to which he appointed one-third of the members, thwarting him for now.
The tensions could flare again on Tuesday, when the justices are expected to attend Trump’s State of the Union address. Trump told The Hill’s Julia Manchester during his Friday briefing that the justices were “invited — barely” to the address and that he could not “care less” whether they come.
It would not be the first example of friction in those surroundings, of course.
Back in 2010, then-President Obama criticized the Citizens United ruling as likely to “open the floodgates for special interests — including foreign corporations — to spend without limit in our elections.”
Justice Samuel Alito, sitting just in front of Obama, appeared to mouth the words “not true” in response.
Obama, of course, had prefaced his criticism of the ruling with a recognition of “due deference to the separation of powers.” He did not suggest the conservative justices had disgraced their families.
The times, and the president, are very different now.
The Memo is a reported column by Niall Stanage.
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