President Trump took to Truth Social on Saturday morning to single out Justice Brett Kavanaugh for praise after the Supreme Court voted 6-3 to block his tariff authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.
"My new hero is United States Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and, of course, Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito."
Trump added that there is "no doubt in anyone's mind" the three justices want to "MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!"
Fox News reported that hours later, he moved forward on trade policy anyway, raising the global tariff to 15%, up from the 10% rate he announced Friday, and citing Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 as his new legal authority.
The Supreme Court may have closed one door. Trump walked through another.
Kavanaugh didn't just vote with the minority. He wrote a dissent that dismantled the majority's reasoning with surgical precision, calling the court's decision "illogical." His core argument zeroed in on a contradiction that should trouble anyone who reads statutes with a straight face:
"As they interpret the statute, the President could, for example, block all imports from China but cannot order even a $1 tariff on goods imported from China."
Read that again. Under the majority's logic, a total embargo is permissible but a nominal tariff is not. Kavanaugh put it plainly: "That approach does not make much sense."
He argued that the IEEPA "does not draw such an odd distinction between quotas and embargoes on the one hand and tariffs on the other." The statute grants broad emergency powers. The majority chose to carve out tariffs specifically, a distinction the text doesn't support and common sense doesn't reward.
Trump, in a Friday speech remarking on the decision, praised Kavanaugh for "his genius and his great ability" and said he was "very proud of that appointment."
Kavanaugh's dissent wasn't just about legal logic. He flagged the practical chaos the majority's ruling invites. Importers who already paid tariffs under IEEPA may now be entitled to refunds:
"The United States may be required to refund billions of dollars to importers who paid the IEEPA tariffs, even though some importers may have already passed on costs to consumers or others."
Think about that for a moment. Importers raised prices, consumers paid those prices, and now the government may have to cut refund checks to the importers anyway. The money doesn't flow back to the families who absorbed the costs at the register. It flows back to the companies that already collected it.
Kavanaugh noted that this was acknowledged during oral argument, quoting the concession that the refund process is likely to be a "mess." He also warned that the decision would "generate uncertainty" and "substantially constrain" the executive's ability to act under "numerous other federal statutes."
This is the part that extends well beyond tariff policy. When the Court narrows emergency economic powers in one context, the ripple effects touch every statute built on similar language. Future presidents of both parties will feel this.
What happened next tells you everything about how this administration operates. Rather than litigate the loss in the press or wait for Congress to act, Trump pivoted to a different statutory authority within hours.
Last year, Trump bypassed Congress and levied tariffs on nearly every country in the world by invoking the IEEPA, arguing that an influx of illicit drugs from China, Mexico, and Canada and a trade deficit that has decimated American manufacturing constituted emergencies justifying the action. The Supreme Court disagreed with that legal vehicle. So on Saturday, Trump raised the global tariff to 15% under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974.
The trade agenda continues. The legal pathway changed. The destination didn't.
The 6-3 ruling is a significant institutional moment, but it shouldn't be mistaken for the end of the tariff debate. The government has said it is pursuing trade deals worth trillions of dollars with foreign nations. The leverage that tariffs provide in those negotiations doesn't evaporate because the Court preferred one statute over another.
What the ruling does reveal is the ongoing tension between an executive branch that moves at the speed of economic competition and a judicial branch that moves at the speed of statutory interpretation. Three justices understood that gap. Six did not.
Kavanaugh, Thomas, and Alito read the IEEPA for what it says. The majority read it for what they wished it didn't. The distinction matters, and not just for trade policy. It matters for every future president who inherits emergency powers and discovers, mid-crisis, that the Court has quietly redrawn the boundaries.
Trump called Kavanaugh his new hero. Given what that dissent may mean for executive authority over the next generation, the title might be earned.
