WASHINGTON — President Trump lashed out Wednesday night at two of his Supreme Court nominees after they ruled against him in last month’s benchmark tariff case.
“Bad courts in this country are costing us a tremendous amount of money,” Trump vented during a fundraiser for the National Republican Congressional Committee. “And the Supreme Court, that’s right, of the United States cost our country — all they needed was a sentence — our country hundreds of billions of dollars, and they couldn’t care less.”
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“Not that it matters — doesn’t matter at all — but two of the people that voted for that I appointed, and they sicken me,” he went on. “They sicken me ’cause they are bad for our country.”
The president was referring to Justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett, who joined with four of their colleagues Feb. 20 in ruling that Trump could not use the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to impose sweeping tariffs on a whim.
The 1977 law, which does not mention the word “tariff,” had been used as the foundation of Trump’s protectionist agenda, and he used it to impose customized duties on dozens of countries.
As of mid-December 2025, IEEPA tariffs had taken in $133 billion in fiscal years 2025 and 2026, according to data from US Customs and Border Protection. The high court ruling did not specify whether that money would need to be refunded.
Since the high court’s ruling, the president has been forced to turn to his other tariff powers, which are more cumbersome, less flexible and in some cases are time-limited without congressional consent.
For example, Trump has cited Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 to impose a 15% baseline tariff rate on all countries, but it can only remain in place for five months without legislative approval.
The administration has also opened investigations under Section 301 of the same law into whether major trading partners have policies that either discriminate against US goods or violate economic agreements. Any tariff imposed based on the review findings would remain in effect for four years.
Trump’s other Supreme Court pick from his first term, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, dissented in Trump’s favor, arguing that if IEEPA allows a president to completely cut off trade with a country, it could also be used for less drastic steps like tariffs.
Kavanaugh also noted that “the Court’s decision might not prevent the Presidents from imposing most if not all of these same sorts of tariffs under other statutory authorities.”
White House trade adviser Peter Navarro described the Supreme Court’s tariff ruling as “the best possible outcome” for the Trump administration.
“Even though we lost the IEEPA tariffs, it was the best possible outcome because the justices ratified and affirmed the use of every other statute we’ve been using to implement tariffs,” Navarro said during Politico’s energy summit Wednesday.
The president’s broadsides against the high court came days after Chief Justice John Roberts lamented widespread “hostility” toward the judicial system.
“Judges around the country work very hard to get it right, and if they don’t, their opinions are subject to criticism,” Roberts said during a rare public appearance at an event last week. “But, personally directed hostility is dangerous, and it’s got to stop.”
