President Donald Trump said Saturday he is raising global tariffs to 15% from the 10% import tax he imposed the day before in response to the Supreme Court’s ruling striking down his sweeping tariffs.
“Based on a thorough, detailed, and complete review of the ridiculous, poorly written, and extraordinarily anti-American decision on Tariffs issued yesterday, after MANY months of contemplation, by the United States Supreme Court, please let this statement serve to represent that I, as President of the United States of America, will be, effective immediately, raising the 10% Worldwide Tariff on Countries, many of which have been ‘ripping’ the U.S. off for decades, without retribution (until I came along!), to the fully allowed, and legally tested, 15% level,” he wrote on Truth Social.
Trump had initially set the global tariffs at 10% in an executive order on Friday evening. Those tariffs, enacted under section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, are in effect for 150 days unless Congress approves its extension.
On Saturday, he upped that figure to 15%. The sudden increase was met with immediate criticism from both sides of the aisle.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., called it a “dumb” move. “He’s just making it up as he goes and Americans pay the price,” Schumer said on X.
“Trump’s commitment to pickpocketing the American people is relentless,” House Ways and Means Committee Democrats wrote on X. “A little over 24 hours after his tariffs were ruled illegal, he’s doing anything he can to make sure he can still jack up your costs.”
Scott Lincicome, vice president of general economics at the right-leaning CATO Institute, wrote, “Clearly, this is all a very legitimate and rigorous ‘balance of payments’ remedy under the statute here. Yet another reason why congress needs to reform the law.”
Trump has been seething over the Supreme Court’s decision to invalidate the tariffs he imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. Three conservative justices — Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett and Chief Justice John Roberts — sided with their liberal colleagues in the ruling, which The Wall Street Journal’s conservative editorial board called “a monumental vindication of the Constitution’s separation of powers.”
At a news conference on Friday, Trump said he was “ashamed of certain members of the court” and accused the justices of being “unpatriotic and disloyal to our Constitution.” He claimed without providing evidence that the court was “swayed by foreign interests and a political movement that is far smaller than people would ever think.”
He singled out Gorsuch and Barrett, two of his appointees to the high court, in a post on Truth Social later that day, saying that they “vote against the Republicans, and never against themselves, almost every single time, no matter how good a case we have.”
He then continued his streak into Saturday morning, lavishing praise on the conservative justices who disagreed with the majority decision.
“My new hero is United States Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and, of course, Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito,” Trump wrote. “There is no doubt in anyone’s mind that they want to, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
The additional 5% increase on the tariffs he hastily imposed on Saturday could further shake global markets, which have been rattled by the president’s unpredictable tariff threats.
The Supreme Court ruling raised more uncertainty for consumers, who were left wondering whether they might be reimbursed for all the extra money they paid for goods and products over the past year.
While the court didn’t explicitly address reimbursement, Kavanaugh did in his dissent, saying, “Refunds of billions of dollars would have significant consequences for the U.S. Treasury. The Court says nothing today about whether, and if so how, the Government should go about returning the billions of dollars that it has collected from importers.”
Clarissa-Jan Lim is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW. She was previously a senior reporter and editor at BuzzFeed News.