President Trump moved within hours.
After the Supreme Court struck down his sweeping tariffs imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, Trump signed a new Proclamation from the Oval Office imposing a ten percent tariff on imports from every country, this time under a different legal authority entirely.
The new tariff takes effect February 24. Trump announced the move directly:
"It is my Great Honor to have just signed, from the Oval Office, a Global 10% Tariff on all Countries, which will be effective almost immediately."
The Supreme Court had ruled 6-3 that the original tariffs, built on a 1977 emergency statute, exceeded presidential authority. The new order sidesteps that ruling completely, invoking Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 instead. The proclamation imposes a ten percent ad valorem import duty on articles imported into the United States for a period of 150 days.
The Court's majority included Chief Justice John Roberts alongside Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, Elena Kagan, Ketanji Brown Jackson, and Sonia Sotomayor. Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito dissented, Breitbart reports.
Kavanaugh's dissent may prove the most consequential piece of the ruling, not for what it said about IEEPA, but for what it said about everything else. He laid out the roadmap in plain language:
"Although I firmly disagree with the Court's holding today, the decision might not substantially constrain a President's ability to order tariffs going forward. That is because numerous other federal statutes authorize the President to impose tariffs and might justify most (if not all) of the tariffs at issue in this case, albeit perhaps with a few additional procedural steps that IEEPA, as an emergency statute, does not require."
Kavanaugh cited the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, the Trade Act of 1974, and the Tariff Act of 1930 as alternative authorities. His conclusion was blunt: the Court decided the President "checked the wrong statutory box."
Trump checked a different one within hours.
The new ten percent global tariff is not replacing everything the administration has built. Trump made clear that prior trade actions remain untouched:
"Effective immediately, all national security tariffs under Section 232 and existing Section 301 tariffs remain in place, fully in place, and in full force and effect."
This matters because the tariff architecture the administration has constructed since February 2025 is layered. Consider what remains in force:
The new ten percent global tariff sits on top of all of that. And the administration signaled it is not finished. Trump stated the government is "initiating several Section 301 and other investigations, to protect our country from unfair trading practices of other countries and companies."
The political class expected the Supreme Court loss to freeze the trade agenda. Media outlets were ready with their "major blow" headlines. The Court's ruling marked the first time the high court had definitively struck down one of Trump's second-term policies, as Breitbart News's John Carney reported.
What they got instead was a same-day replacement order grounded in a statute Congress specifically designed to give the President trade authority. The Trade Act of 1974 was not some dusty workaround discovered in a legal basement. Section 122 exists precisely to empower the President to address fundamental international payment problems through surcharges and special import restrictions, according to a White House fact sheet.
The 150-day window on the new proclamation is worth noting. It is a temporary measure by design, which tracks with what Section 122 authorizes. But "temporary" in trade policy is a relative term. A hundred and fifty days of a universal ten percent tariff, stacked on existing country-specific duties, reshapes trade calculations in real time. Supply chains do not pause politely while legal scholars debate statutory boxes.
The 6-3 ruling will be celebrated in certain quarters as a constitutional triumph and a reassertion of congressional authority over trade. That framing has a short shelf life. The practical effect of the decision was to force the administration to walk across the hall and pull a different lever.
Congress has spent decades delegating trade authority to the executive branch through multiple overlapping statutes. The Court told the President he used the wrong one. It did not tell him he lacked the power. That distinction is everything.
The opponents of Trump's trade agenda won a ruling. They did not win the argument. The tariffs are back, on a different legal foundation, effective Monday morning. The investigations are expanding. The existing duties remain untouched.
Whatever procedural victory the Court's majority delivered, the President answered it before the ink dried.
