2026-02-20T15:06:10.293Z / 路透社
华盛顿，2月20日（路透社） – 美国最高法院周五以具有里程碑意义的裁决推翻了唐纳德·特朗普依据1977年《国际紧急经济权力法》（IEEPA）实施的全面关税政策，给这位共和党总统带来了沉重打击，这一裁决对全球经济具有重大影响。
在由保守派首席大法官约翰·罗伯茨撰写的6:3裁决中，最高法院维持了下级法院的判决，认定特朗普对该法律的使用超出了其权限。最高法院裁定，争议法律——《国际紧急经济权力法》（IEEPA）并未赋予特朗普声称拥有的征收关税的权力。
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罗伯茨在裁决中引用该法律条文称：”我们今天的任务只是裁定，《国际紧急经济权力法》赋予总统的’规范……进口’权力是否包含征收关税的权力。答案是否定的。”
白宫尚未立即对裁决发表评论。民主党人和多个行业组织对该裁决表示欢迎。许多商业团体则表示担忧，认为这一决定将导致数月的额外不确定性，因为特朗普政府将通过其他法律途径继续推行新的关税政策。
这一裁决推动美国股市指数创下两周多以来最大涨幅（此前一直受特朗普不可预测的关税政策影响），美元汇率走弱，国债收益率小幅上升。
保守派大法官布雷特·卡瓦诺与克拉伦斯·托马斯、塞缪尔·阿利托共同撰写了异议意见，认为该裁决并不一定排除特朗普”根据其他法律规定实施大部分甚至全部类似关税”的可能性，并补充道：”法院的这一决定不太可能大幅限制总统未来的关税授权。”
最高法院多数派还声明，这种解释将侵犯国会的权力，并违反了所谓的”重大问题原则”——该原则要求政府行政部门采取具有”重大经济和政治意义”的行动时，必须获得国会的明确授权。最高法院曾用这一原则阻碍了民主党前总统乔·拜登的多项关键行政令。
罗伯茨援引最高法院先例称：”总统必须’指明明确的国会授权’来证明其声称的征收关税的非凡权力是合理的，而他无法做到这一点。”
他还写道：”如果国会有意让《国际紧急经济权力法》赋予总统’征收关税这一独特且非凡的权力’，它本会像在其他关税法案中一贯做的那样，明确作出规定。”
特朗普将关税（对进口商品征税）作为关键的经济和外交政策工具。自他在2025年1月开始第二个总统任期以来，关税成为其发起全球贸易战的核心，导致贸易伙伴疏远、金融市场动荡并引发全球经济不确定性。
这场法律挑战由受关税影响的企业和12个美国州（其中大部分由民主党治理）提起，最高法院对此作出了最终裁决。
多数派法官包括罗伯茨、尼尔·戈萨奇和艾米·科尼·巴雷特（均为特朗普在其第一任期内任命），以及自由派大法官索尼娅·索托马约尔、埃琳娜·卡根和凯坦吉·布朗·杰克逊。
自由派法官并未在援引”重大问题原则”的部分意见上签字。
自2025年1月特朗普重返总统职位后，最高法院在一系列紧急状态下的裁决中曾多次支持他，尽管当时其政策受到下级法院的阻碍。
特朗普的关税政策预计在未来十年将为美国（全球最大经济体）带来数万亿美元的收入。
特朗普政府自12月14日起未提供关税征收数据。但宾夕法尼亚大学沃顿商学院预算模型经济学家周五估计，根据IEEPA征收的关税收入超过1750亿美元，而最高法院对基于IEEPA的关税的否定裁决可能需要将这笔收入退还。
国会权力
美国宪法规定，征税和关税权属于国会，而非总统。但特朗普却绕过国会，援引IEEPA单方面对几乎所有美国贸易伙伴实施关税。他还依据其他无关法律实施了额外关税，这些关税约占其总关税收入的三分之一（根据10月至12月中旬的政府数据）。
IEEPA允许总统在国家紧急状态下管制商业活动。特朗普成为首位使用IEEPA实施关税的总统，自重返白宫以来，他在移民打击、解雇联邦机构官员、国内军事部署和海外军事行动等多个领域均大幅扩张了行政权力。
卡瓦诺在异议意见中表示，IEEPA的文本、历史和先例均支持特朗普政府的立场。”与配额和禁运一样，关税是调节进口的传统常用工具。”他补充道：”本案中的关税可能是也可能不是明智的政策，但从文本、历史和先例来看，它们显然是合法的。我恭敬地表示异议。”
卡瓦诺担忧该裁决可能带来”近期严重的实际后果”，包括退款问题以及关税在国际谈判中的作用。”由于IEEPA关税帮助促成了价值数万亿美元的贸易协议（包括与中国、英国和日本等国的协议），法院的裁决可能会对各类贸易协定带来不确定性。”
特朗普将关税描述为美国经济安全的关键，声称没有关税美国将”无防御能力并被摧毁”。11月，他对记者说：”没有我的关税，世界其他国家会嘲笑我们，因为他们多年来一直对我们使用关税并占我们便宜。”
加拿大商会总裁兼首席执行官坎迪斯·莱恩表示，该裁决是法律层面的判断，而非美国贸易政策的重新设定。”加拿大应准备应对新的、更直接的施压手段，这些手段可能会带来更广泛和破坏性的影响。”
在最高法院11月听取本案辩论后，特朗普表示若裁决不利，他将考虑替代方案：”我们将不得不制定’游戏二’计划。”
财政部长斯科特·贝森特和其他政府官员称，美国将援引其他法律依据尽可能保留特朗普的关税政策，包括允许对威胁美国国家安全的进口商品征税的法律条款，以及允许对美国贸易代表认定的存在不公平贸易行为的贸易伙伴实施报复性关税的条款。
这些替代方案无法提供IEEPA那样的灵活性和冲击力，可能无法及时复制特朗普关税政策的全部范围。
参议院民主党领袖查克·舒默称这一裁决是”每个美国消费者钱包的胜利”，并表示：”特朗普的非法关税税已崩溃。他试图通过法令统治并让家庭承担账单。混乱够了，结束贸易战。”
民主党参议员伊丽莎白·沃伦则指出，法院的裁决留下了诸多未决问题：”法院推翻了这些破坏性关税，但消费者和许多小企业没有合法机制追回已支付的款项。相反，大公司可以用其庞大的律师和游说团队起诉要求退还关税，然后将钱据为己有。”
增强的杠杆作用
特朗普能够以某种形式的”国家紧急状态”名义对任何贸易伙伴的商品立即征收关税，这增强了他对其他国家的谈判杠杆。这促使世界各国领导人纷纷前往华盛顿寻求贸易协议，其中常包含数十亿美元的投资承诺或为美国企业扩大市场准入的条款。
但特朗普将关税作为外交政策工具的做法已引起众多国家的不满，包括长期被视为美国最亲密盟友的国家。
IEEPA历史上主要用于对敌对国家实施制裁或冻结资产，而非征收关税。该法律文本中并未明确提及”关税”一词。特朗普的司法部辩称，IEEPA通过授权总统”规范”进口以应对紧急情况，从而隐含了征收关税的权力。
国会预算办公室估计，如果所有现行关税（包括基于IEEPA的关税）维持不变，未来十年每年将带来约3000亿美元收入。根据美国财政部数据，截至9月30日的2025财年，美国净关税收入达到创纪录的1950亿美元。
4月2日（特朗普称之为”解放日”），总统宣布对大多数美国贸易伙伴进口商品实施”对等”关税，援引IEEPA应对所谓的”美国贸易逆差紧急状态”——尽管美国数十年来一直存在贸易逆差。
2025年2月和3月，特朗普以芬太尼和非法毒品走私构成”国家紧急状态”为由，依据IEEPA对中国、加拿大和墨西哥实施关税。
迫使让步
特朗普利用关税迫使他国让步并重新谈判贸易协议，同时将其作为惩罚在非贸易政治问题上触怒他的国家的武器。这些案例包括巴西对前总统雅伊尔·博索纳罗的起诉、印度购买俄罗斯石油（资助俄乌战争）以及加拿大安大略省的反关税广告。
IEEPA由民主党总统卡特签署成为法律，国会在通过该法案时相比之前的法律进一步限制了总统权力。
关税相关诉讼
最高法院审理的关税案件涉及三起诉讼：
- 联邦巡回上诉法院支持了五家进口商品的小企业
- 亚利桑那州、科罗拉多州等11个州（共12州）的诉讼
- 华盛顿联邦法官支持了一家名为”Learning Resources”的家族玩具公司
报道：安德鲁·钟；补充报道：大卫·劳德、大卫·谢泼德森；编辑：威尔·邓纳姆
我们的标准：路透社信托原则[查看标准]
US Supreme Court strikes down Trump’s global tariffs
2026-02-20T15:06:10.293Z / Reuters
WASHINGTON, Feb 20 (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court struck down Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs that he pursued under a law meant for use in national emergencies, handing a stinging defeat to the Republican president in a landmark opinion on Friday with major implications for the global economy.
The justices, in a 6-3 ruling authored by conservative Chief Justice John Roberts, upheld a lower court’s decision that Trump’s use of this 1977 law exceeded his authority. The justices ruled that the law at issue – the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA – did not grant Trump the power he claimed to impose tariffs.
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“Our task today is to decide only whether the power to “regulate … importation,” as granted to the president in IEEPA, embraces the power to impose tariffs. It does not,” Roberts wrote in the ruling, quoting the statute’s text that Trump claimed had justified his sweeping tariffs.
The White House had no immediate comment on the ruling. Democrats and various industry groups hailed the ruling. Many business groups expressed concern that the decision will lead to months of additional uncertainty as the administration pursues new tariffs through other legal authorities.
The ruling sent US stock indexes, long buffetted by Trump’s unpredictable moves on tariffs, up by the most in more than two weeks and weakened the dollar. Treasury yields edged higher.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh, writing a dissent joined by fellow conservatives Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, wrote that the ruling did not necessarily foreclose Trump “from imposing most if not all of these same sorts of tariffs under other statutory authorities,” adding that “the court’s decision is not likely to greatly restrict presidential tariff authority going forward.”
Part of the Supreme Court’s majority also declared that such an interpretation would intrude on the powers of Congress and violate a legal principle called the major questions doctrine.
The conservative doctrine requires actions by the government’s executive branch of “vast economic and political significance” to be clearly authorized by Congress. The court used the doctrine to stymie some of Democratic former President Joe Biden’s key executive actions.
Roberts, citing a prior Supreme Court ruling, wrote that “the president must ‘point to clear congressional authorization’ to justify his extraordinary assertion of the power to impose tariffs,” adding: “He cannot.”
Roberts wrote that if Congress had intended IEEPA to bestow on the president “the distinct and extraordinary power to impose tariffs, it would have done so expressly – as it consistently has in other tariff statutes.”
Trump has leveraged tariffs – taxes on imported goods – as a key economic and foreign policy tool. They have been central to a global trade war that Trump initiated after he began his second term as president, one that has alienated trading partners, affected financial markets and caused global economic uncertainty.
The Supreme Court reached its conclusion in a legal challenge by businesses affected by the tariffs and 12 U.S. states, most of them Democratic-governed, against Trump’s unprecedented use of this law to unilaterally impose the import taxes.
Joining Roberts in the majority were conservative Justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett, both of whom Trump appointed during his first term in office, along with the three liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
The liberal justices did not join the part of the opinion invoking the major questions doctrine.
The Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, previously had backed Trump in a series of other decisions issued on an emergency basis since he returned to the presidency in January 2025 after his policies were impeded by lower courts.
Trump’s tariffs were forecast to generate over the next decade trillions of dollars in revenue for the United States, which possesses the world’s largest economy.
Trump’s administration has not provided tariffs collection data since December 14. But Penn-Wharton Budget Model economists estimated on Friday that the amount collected in Trump’s tariffs based on IEEPA stood at more than $175 billion. And that amount likely would need to be refunded with a Supreme Court ruling against the IEEPA-based tariffs.
POWERS OF CONGRESS
The U.S. Constitution grants Congress, not the president, the authority to issue taxes and tariffs. But Trump instead turned to a statutory authority by invoking IEEPA to impose the tariffs on nearly every U.S. trading partner without the approval of Congress. Trump has imposed some additional tariffs under other laws that are not at issue in this case. Based on government data from October to mid-December, those represent about a third of the revenue from Trump-imposed tariffs.
IEEPA lets a president regulate commerce in a national emergency. Trump became the first president to use IEEPA to impose tariffs, one of the many ways he has aggressively pushed the boundaries of executive authority since he returned to office in areas as varied as his crackdown on immigration, the
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, domestic military deployments and military operations overseas.
Kavanaugh, who also was appointed by Trump during his first term as president, in a written dissent said that IEEPA’s text, as well as history and prior Supreme Court rulings supported the Trump administration’s position.
“Like quotas and embargoes, tariffs are a traditional and common tool to regulate importation,” wrote Kavanaugh, whose dissenting opinion was joined by Thomas and Alito.
“The tariffs at issue here may or may not be wise policy,” Kavanaugh added. “But as a matter of text, history, and precedent, they are clearly lawful. I respectfully dissent.”
Kavanaugh, in his dissent, expressed concern that the ruling would likely generate “serious practical consequences in the near term,” including issues related to refunds and the role tariffs played in reaching international trade deals.
“Because IEEPA tariffs have helped facilitate trade deals worth trillions of dollars—including with foreign nations from China to the United Kingdom to Japan, the Court’s decision could generate uncertainty regarding various trade agreements,” Kavanaugh wrote.
“Refunds of billions of dollars would have significant consequences for the U.S. Treasury,” Kavanaugh added.
Trump described the tariffs as vital for U.S. economic security, predicting that the country would be defenseless and ruined without them. Trump in November told reporters that without his tariffs “the rest of the world would laugh at us because they’ve used tariffs against us for years and took advantage of us.” Trump said the United States was abused by other countries including China, the second-largest economy.
Candace Laing, president and CEO of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, said the decision was a legal ruling, not a reset of U.S. trade policy.
“Canada should prepare for new, blunter mechanisms to be used to reassert trade pressure, potentially with broader and more disruptive effects,” Laing said in a statement.
After the Supreme Court heard arguments in the case in November, Trump said he would consider alternatives if it ruled against him on tariffs, telling reporters that “we’ll have to develop a ‘game two’ plan.”
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and other administration officials said the United States would invoke other legal justifications to retain as many of Trump’s tariffs as possible. Among others, these include a statutory provision that permits tariffs on imported goods that threaten U.S. national security and another that allows retaliatory actions including tariffs against trading partners that the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative determines have used unfair trade practices against American exporters.
None of these alternatives offered the flexibility and blunt-force dynamics that IEEPA provided Trump, and may not be able to replicate the full scope of his tariffs in a timely fashion.
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer called the decision a “victory for the wallets of every American consumer,” adding: Trump’s illegal tariff tax just collapsed. He tried to govern by decree and stuck families with the bill. Enough chaos. End the trade war.”
Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren said the ruling left many questions unanswered.
“The Court has struck down these destructive tariffs, but there is no legal mechanism for consumers and many small businesses to recoup the money they have already paid. Instead, giant corporations with their armies of lawyers and lobbyists can sue for tariff refunds, then just pocket the money for themselves,” Warren said.
INCREASED LEVERAGE
Trump’s ability to impose tariffs instantaneously on any trading partner’s goods under the aegis of some form of declared national emergency raised his leverage over other countries. It brought world leaders scrambling to Washington to secure trade deals that often included pledges of billions of dollars in investments or other offers of enhanced market access for U.S. companies.
But Trump’s use of tariffs as a cudgel in U.S. foreign policy has succeeded in antagonizing numerous countries, including those long considered among the closest U.S. allies.
IEEPA historically had been used for imposing sanctions on enemies or freezing their assets, not to impose tariffs. The law does not specifically mention the word tariffs. Trump’s Justice Department had argued that IEEPA allows tariffs by authorizing the president to “regulate” imports to address emergencies.
The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that if all current tariffs stay in place, including the IEEPA-based duties, they would generate about $300 billion annually over the next decade.
Total U.S. net customs duty receipts reached a record $195 billion in fiscal 2025, which ended on September 30, according to U.S. Treasury Department data.
On April 2 on a date Trump labeled “Liberation Day,” the president announced what he called “reciprocal” tariffs on goods imported from most U.S. trading partners, invoking IEEPA to address what he called a national emergency related to U.S. trade deficits, though the United States already had run trade deficits for decades.
In February and March of 2025, Trump invoked IEEPA to impose tariffs on China, Canada and Mexico, citing the trafficking of the often-abused painkiller fentanyl and illicit drugs into the United States as a national emergency.
EXTRACTING CONCESSIONS
Trump has wielded his tariffs to extract concessions and renegotiate trade deals, and as a weapon to punish countries that draw his ire on non-trade political matters. These have ranged from Brazil’s prosecution of former president Jair Bolsonaro, India’s purchases of Russian oil that help fund Russia’s war in Ukraine, and an anti-tariffs ad by Canada’s Ontario province.
IEEPA was passed by Congress and signed by Democratic President Jimmy Carter. In passing the measure, Congress placed additional limits on the president’s authority compared to a predecessor law.
The cases on tariffs before the justices involved three lawsuits.
The Washington-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit sided with five small businesses that import goods in one challenge, and the states of Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, Oregon and Vermont in another.
Separately, a Washington-based federal judge sided with a family-owned toy company called Learning Resources.
Reporting by Andrew Chung; Additional reporting by David Lawder and David Shepardson; Editing by Will Dunham
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