Trump Tariffs & Justices’ Loyalty to Trump
To: Interested Parties
From: Josh Orton, Demand Justice
Date: November 3, 2025
Subject: Trump Tariffs & Justices’ Loyalty to Trump
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump–the consolidated challenges to President Trump’s tariffs. Reporters and Court observers should recognize that this case is about far more than an economic debate or a trade-law dispute. This case is a constitutional stress test: will the Court’s conservative majority continue ceding to Trump, without constraint, the power to personally shape American life?
Trump’s now-reversed threat to appear at Court arguments in person serves as a reminder that he wants to pressure the Court to act as an extension of himself.
The question tomorrow: will they?
In court, Trump’s tariffs have struck out so far: every lower court to review his tariffs found them an unlawful overreach. Significantly, a key part of the case against Trump’s position is the “major questions” doctrine, which the Court previously invoked to block many of former President Biden’s actions. That doctrine only permits executive action on matters of “‘vast economic and political significance’ when there is clear statutory authorization.
Succinctly, at issue here is a 1977 law known as International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which gives presidents the ability to regulate imports–the law says nothing on tariffs specifically–when a national emergency is declared under certain circumstances.
- Trump argues that the national emergency (he manufactured) in response to long-standing trade deficits in April 2025 allows him to invoke the act and, despite the lack of authorization in the law to enact tariffs, to implement his tariff regime.
- The challengers to the government argue first that there is no actual national emergency and, second, even if there was, the law lacks any specific language that would authorize the implementation of tariffs and does not permit the president to do so.
But to this Court, will the law really matter? The Roberts majority has shown over and over that they are willing to act not as an independent branch of government but as subservient deputies in Trump’s growing insistence on authoritarian power. Trump has made his expectations clear: he wants a Court that “behaves”—one that continues dismantling every remaining check on his power.
The tariffs case, foundationally, is not a question of ideology, as conservative orthodoxy has long opposed tariffs. Instead, Learning Resources follows the same trajectory of dangerously expanding executive power as Trump v. United States, when Chief Justice’s July 2024 opinion granted Trump unprecedented immunity, shielding him from prosecution on criminal charges tied to the 2020 election and paving his way back to the White House.
In the wake of that decision, the Court has leveraged the Shadow Docket to make sweeping changes to the law without any legal rationale, overwhelmingly deferring not just to Trump’s policy desires—but to his efforts to bulldoze Congress and the judiciary itself.
What’s more, the Court’s majority has looked the other way as Trump officials “openly flout” court orders, all while issuing decisions that limit the ability of lower courts to block likely unconstitutional Executive Orders and expand Trump’s control over what are supposed to be independent federal agencies.
Now, Trump is demanding that the Court hand him raw power over the economy. If Trump wins here, he won’t just raise costs on American families. He will cement a precedent that expands his power as executive in a dangerous and unprecedented way–letting any president unilaterally rewrite trade law, punish certain industries, harm consumers, or leverage international allies for personal gain.
