The case, Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump (No. 24-1287), consolidated with Trump v. V.O.S. Selections, Inc. (No. 25-250), centers on executive orders President Trump issued invoking IEEPA to impose broad tariffs on imports from countries around the world, citing trade deficits and the fentanyl crisis as national emergencies. Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued for the federal government; Neal Katyal argued for private challengers; and Oregon Solicitor General Benjamin Gutman argued for the state parties.
The core statutory dispute is whether the phrase "regulate importation" in IEEPA — which authorizes the President to "regulate" transactions in which a foreign interest is involved — encompasses the power to impose tariffs. Sauer argued that tariffs are the quintessential method of regulating imports, pointing to a historical pedigree running from the founding through President Nixon's 1971 across-the-board 10 percent tariff, which was upheld under the predecessor Trading With the Enemy Act by the court of appeals with exclusive jurisdiction over the question. He argued that when Congress re-enacted the same "regulate importation" language in IEEPA in 1977, it did so with full awareness of that interpretation. Katyal countered that tariffs are taxes — that they take dollars from Americans' pockets and deposit them in the U.S. Treasury — and that Congress has never once used the word "regulate" alone, in any of the roughly 1,499 instances his team identified in the U.S. Code, to confer a revenue-raising or tariff power. He argued that every statute in which Congress has delegated tariff authority has used explicit language and imposed real limits, such as Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, which caps emergency tariffs at 15 percent for 150 days.
The justices pressed hard on multiple fronts. Chief Justice Roberts noted that the Court in Dames & Moore went out of its way to describe its holding as narrow, quoting the opinion's statements that "Decisions in this area have been rare, episodic, and afford little precedential value for subsequent cases," that "We lay down no general guidelines covering other situations not involved here and confine the opinion only to the very questions necessary to a decision of this case," and that "Finally, we re-emphasize the narrowness of our decision." He also observed that the provision at issue in Dames & Moore was different from the one at issue here and did not concern tariffs, and asked why the major questions doctrine did not apply given that the claimed authority would allow the President to impose tariffs on any product from any country in any amount for any length of time. Justice Kagan challenged Sauer to identify any place in the entire Code where "regulate" alone includes a taxing or tariff power, and noted that Congress removed several verbs from the predecessor statute — including "confiscate," "vest," "hold," "use," "administer," "liquidate," and "sell" — while never adding any language about raising revenue. Justice Sotomayor pressed the asymmetry between "regulate importation" and "regulate exportation," noting that the Constitution bars export taxes, and questioned why the conjunctive phrasing would support reading tariff authority into one but not the other. Justice Jackson pointed to Senate and House report language stating that IEEPA was designed to give the President authority to "control or freeze property transactions where a foreign interest is involved," and asked how that purpose squared with revenue-raising tariffs. Justice Barrett asked whether any statute other than the contested TWEA application in Yoshida had ever used "regulate importation" to confer tariff authority, and pressed on the distinction between licenses and license fees under the statute. Justice Gorsuch extracted a concession from Sauer that the government's position, taken to its logical end, would very likely permit a future president to impose a 50 percent tariff on gas-powered cars to address a declared climate emergency — to which Sauer responded that such a determination would be a question for Congress under the government's interpretation, not for the courts. Gorsuch also pressed Sauer on whether Congress could ever effectively reclaim delegated tariff power given the veto problem, and Sauer pointed to Congress's termination of the COVID emergency in January 2023 as evidence that political oversight could work, though Gorsuch noted that termination occurred with the President's assent.
On nondelegation, Sauer argued that the doctrine applies with far less force in the foreign affairs context, citing Curtiss-Wright and Justice Jackson's Youngstown concurrence, and that the President's inherent Article II authority in foreign affairs reduces the concern. He conceded, under questioning from Justice Gorsuch, that the President has no inherent peacetime tariff authority and that Congress must delegate it. Katyal argued that J.W. Hampton — itself a tariffs case — announced the intelligible principle test without carving out any special rule for foreign affairs, and that IEEPA as currently interpreted has no judicially enforceable ceiling, making it unlike any tariff statute Congress has ever passed. He also noted that the legislative veto, the primary check Congress built into the original IEEPA compromise, was struck down in INS v. Chadha, and that Congress replaced it only with a joint resolution mechanism that Katyal argued provides no comparable constraint given the presidential veto.
On the scope of the emergency declarations, Justice Barrett asked Sauer to explain why every country in the world — including allies like Spain and France — needed to be subject to the reciprocal tariff policy. Sauer pointed to Executive Order 14257, which describes a global pattern of asymmetric trade treatment, and argued that the breadth of the emergency declaration, which challengers have not disputed, explains the breadth of the response. Gutman, for the states, argued that tariffs are categorically different from embargoes and quotas because they raise revenue and cede government control over whether a transaction occurs, while the other IEEPA tools directly prevent or block transactions — which he said is what the statute's verbs actually authorize.