{"id":116287,"date":"2026-02-21T08:18:25","date_gmt":"2026-02-21T08:18:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/?p=116287"},"modified":"2026-02-21T08:18:25","modified_gmt":"2026-02-21T08:18:25","slug":"trump-lashes-out-at-supreme-court-justices-over-tariffs-ruling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/?p=116287","title":{"rendered":"Trump lashes out at Supreme Court justices over tariffs ruling"},"content":{"rendered":"
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US President Donald Trump lashed out in unusually personal terms against the six Supreme Court justices who handed him one of the biggest setbacks of his second term in office by striking down the administration\u2019s global tariffs.<\/p>\n

The court\u2019s Friday ruling was \u201cdeeply disappointing\u201d. The justices who joined the majority opinion should be \u201cabsolutely ashamed\u201d and lacked the courage to \u201cdo the right thing\u201d, Trump said, turning his response into a sweeping attack against a co-equal branch of government.<\/p>\n

The broadside was remarkable even for a president known for blowing past political norms and publicly berating those who challenge his authority.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m ashamed of certain members of the court. Absolutely ashamed for not having the courage to do what\u2019s right for our country,\u201d Trump said at the start of a press conference at the White House, which was held a few hours after the decision was released.<\/p>\n

Trump did not mince words from there as he assessed the decision, which held that presidents do not have inherent authority to impose sweeping tariffs on any country.<\/p>\n

For the next 45 minutes, Trump criticised the ruling and made the case that he would find other methods to continue imposing tariffs on other countries. But throughout he repeatedly returned to the justices in ways that made clear he felt personally slighted by the decision.<\/p>\n

The president did not discriminate against Republican and Democratic appointees, either.<\/p>\n

The six justices who struck down Trump\u2019s tariffs were equally divided among the court\u2019s liberal and conservative wings. Three \u2013 Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson \u2013 were appointed by Democratic presidents. The other three were appointed by Republicans. Chief Justice John Roberts is a George W Bush pick who wrote the majority opinion, and Justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett were appointed by Trump in his first term in office.<\/p>\n

Trump went after them all.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re just being fools and lapdogs for the Rhinos and the radical left Democrats,\u201d Trump said, using shorthand for a term \u2013 Republicans in Name Only \u2013 that is deployed by some on the right to disparage other Republicans deemed not sufficiently loyal to the party.<\/p>\n

The president also claimed that the court was influenced by \u201cforeign interests\u201d in its decision, though he did not provide any details or evidence for the assertion.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s my opinion that the court has been swayed by foreign interests,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Trump declined to elaborate when a reporter pressed him to explain what he meant.<\/p>\n

When asked if he regretted nominating Gorsuch and Coney Barrett, the president stopped short of saying that he had made a mistake. But Trump said their votes were an \u201cembarrassment\u201d and brought up their families, a highly unusual move.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s an embarrassment to their families, to one another,\u201d Trump said.<\/p>\n

At the same time, Trump heaped praise on the three members of the court, Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Brett Kavanaugh, who voted to keep his tariffs authority intact.<\/p>\n

He gave special attention to Kavanaugh, his other first-term appointee.<\/p>\n

In a lengthy dissent, Kavanaugh said the government would be forced to refund billions in tariff revenue and said the process would be a \u201cmess.\u201d The president thanked Kavanaugh, as well as Thomas and Alito, \u201cfor their strength and wisdom and love of our country\u201d.<\/p>\n

Court watchers and trade experts said Trump\u2019s reaction wasn\u2019t surprising given how much he had invested in the outcome of the case.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the court was well aware of the importance to the president of this decision,\u201d said Alan Wm Wolff, a former deputy director-general of the World Trade Organization.<\/p>\n

Colin Grabow, a trade expert at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank in Washington, said the decision represented \u201ca victory for the rule of law\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s unfortunate that he attacked these justices,\u201d Grabow said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Supreme Court said [Trump] went too far,\u201d he added. \u201cPresident Trump took that as an affront. It\u2019s not a surprise.\u201d<\/p>\n

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US President Donald Trump lashed out in unusually personal terms against the six Supreme Court justices who handed him one of the biggest setbacks of his second term in office by striking down the administration’s global tariffs.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":116288,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_2277560469115098_106292521332774":"","twitter_aToxNzczMzI3Njk4OTg4ODUxMjAxOw==_1773327698988851200":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1910,10,9,924,2587,2286],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-116287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international","category-politics","category-popular","category-supreme-court","category-tariffs","category-trump"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=116287"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116287\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/116288"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=116287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=116287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=116287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}