Washington, DC, 21 February (H.S.): President Donald Trump executed an executive order in the Oval Office on Friday, instituting a universal 10 percent tariff on all U.S. imports—effective nearly immediately—mere hours after the Supreme Court's 6-3 verdict invalidated his prior emergency-based levies under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA).

Chief Justice John Roberts' majority opinion held that IEEPA contains no reference to tariffs or duties, rejecting Trump's framing of trade deficits as an economic emergency and affirming Congress's Article I monopoly on taxation, though sector-specific steel, aluminum, and auto tariffs under Sections 232 and 301 endure unscathed.

Trump, whose nominees Gorsuch and Barrett defected to the majority alongside liberals and Roberts, fumed on Truth Social: It is my Great Honor to have just signed... a Global 10% Tariff on all Countries, while decrying justices lacking courage and alleging shadowy foreign interests sway.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent assured Dallas economists the maneuver would sustain 2026 tariff inflows virtually unchanged, leveraging Section 122's balance-of-payments clause for broader application than IEEPA, as Trump boasted: A president can actually charge more tariffs than I was charging... leaving me more powerful.

Wall Street eked modest gains on anticipated continuity, with business lobbies like the National Retail Federation hailing much-needed certainty despite Yale Budget Lab pegging residual rates—the loftiest since 1946—at 9.1 percent.

The ruling sidestepped $175 billion in potential reimbursements per Penn Wharton's model, with Trump forecasting years of litigation and dissenter Brett Kavanaugh warning of a mess; California Governor Gavin Newsom demanded every dollar unlawfully taken... refunded immediately—with interest, while Senator Elizabeth Warren flagged absent mechanisms for consumers.

Trading partners including the EU, UK, Canada, and India scrutinized implications—Ottawa bracing for blunter mechanisms—as bilateral pacts ostensibly persist.

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Hindusthan Samachar / Jun Sarkar