(Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court will not issue a ruling on Friday in a key case testing the legality of U.S. President Donald Trump’s sweeping global trade tariffs.
The judges issued a decision this Friday in another case, of a criminal nature. The court does not announce in advance which cases will be decided.
The challenge to Trump’s trade tariffs marks a key test of presidential powers, as well as the U.S. Supreme Court’s willingness to check some of the Republican president’s far-reaching claims to authority since he returned to office in January 2025. The outcome will also impact the global economy.
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During arguments in the case heard by the court on Nov. 5, the court’s conservative and progressive justices appeared to cast doubt on the legality of the tariffs, which Trump imposed by invoking a 1977 law intended to be used during national emergencies. The Trump administration is appealing lower court rulings that found it overstepped its authority in imposing the tariffs.
Trump said the tariffs made the United States stronger financially. In a social media post on Jan. 2, Trump said a Supreme Court ruling against the tariffs would be a “terrible blow” to the United States.
Trump invoked the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose so-called “reciprocal” tariffs on products imported from individual countries — almost all foreign trading partners — to address what he called a national emergency related to U.S. trade deficits.
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He invoked the same law to impose trade tariffs on China, Canada and Mexico, citing the trafficking of fentanyl — an often abused, addictive painkiller — and illicit drugs into the United States as a national emergency.
Challenges to the tariffs in the cases before the Supreme Court were filed by companies affected by the tariffs and by 12 US states, most of them governed by Democrats.
