After decimating countless industries with his ultra-aggressive and wide-ranging tariff plan, President Donald Trump's expensive duties have been ruled illegal by the now-majority conservative Supreme Court.
According to reports by AP and CNN, the Supreme Court decided 6-3 that Trump's sweeping tariffs exceeded the powers he has. The decision--which centered on the "reciprocal" tariffs he levied on nearly every other country--came from Chief Justice John Roberts, who wrote for the court that the Constitution "very clearly" gives Congress the power to impose taxes (and that does include tariffs, too).
“The Framers did not vest any part of the taxing power in the Executive Branch," Roberts wrote in the decision. "The president asserts the extraordinary power to unilaterally impose tariffs of unlimited amount, duration, and scope. In light of the breadth, history, and constitutional context of that asserted authority, he must identify clear congressional authorization to exercise it."
Trump-appointed justices Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch joined Roberts and the three liberal justices--Elena Kagan, Ketanji Brown Jackson, and Sonia Sotomayor--in the majority. Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito dissented. The court didn't explain what would happen with the over $130 billion in tariffs that have already been collected, though.
Trump was not particularly enthused by this news, as one might imagine. Writing on Truth Social, the President said he was "ashamed" of the Supreme Court justices who voted against the tariffs.
"I can do anything I want, but I can't charge one dollar," Trump said in a ranting press conference following the news.
This comes about a year after the President began hurling tariffs at just about every other country under the sun, which has harmed numerous industries--including gaming. The far-reaching duties, which have been a major point of Trump's economic agenda for his second term, have caused the new Terminator game to suffer a delay, hiked the prices of the Nintendo Switch and the PlayStation 5 (and potentially the Switch 2), pushed back the release of the Analogue 3D, and "mortally injured" the long-running FGC event Combo Breaker. It's wreaked such havoc that some analysts believed that publishers may abandon physical game releases as import fees have raised the prices of manufacturing.
Even the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) has explained that Trump's tariffs could not just "harm" the games industry, but also will have a "detrimental impact" on everyone involved in gaming. While some experts said that the President's duties could lead to more expensive games, retro system creators like Anbernic and peripheral makers 8BitDo halted sales in the US over them. Meanwhile, a tabletop publisher had very publicly sued the Trump administration over tariffs.
