Originally published March 6, 2026 for our weekly Issue of Mindful Intelligence Advisor. Subscribe to get weekly issues.
By Paul Gordon Collier, Editor
“As (Kavanaugh) explains, the Court’s decision … cannot be justified as a matter of statutory interpretation. Congress authorized the President to ‘regulate … importation. Throughout American history, the authority to ‘regulate importation’ has been understood to include the authority to impose duties on imports….
As I suggested over a decade ago, the nondelegation doctrine does not apply to ‘a delegation of power to make rules governing private conduct in the area of foreign trade,’ including rules imposing duties on imports. Therefore, to the extent that the Court relies on ‘separation of powers principles’ to rule against the President is mistaken.” – Clarence Thomas on the SCOTUS Tarriff ruling
INTRODUCTION
Americans waited for days, weeks, and months to learn what the Supreme Court of the United States would say about President Trump’s use of tariffs under the IEEPA Act (International Emergency Economic Powers).
The long delay in the ruling led many to believe it would be a partial win and loss for the President, but in the end, it would turn out to be a loss, but not a definitive one. The court refused to clean up the mess its ruling has already produced, the scramble for tariff refunds from domestic and foreign interests (a scramble well under way).
It also only selectively struck down tariffs made through the IEEPA Act, not tariffs in general (though the precedent set by this court might eventually do so).
The President responded with defiant words, but compliant action. He chose not to challenge what seems to many Americans to be an on-its-face unconstitutional power grab from the court. He chose instead to create new tariffs through other laws, while offering threats to American companies to attempt to stave off the refund hell coming our way thanks to what this writer considers to be (and has considered for a long time) an anti-American rogue court. In short, this is a Progmerican court, which is NOT American at all.
We analyze Roberts’ ruling primarily, Trump’s response, the market’s response, the global response, and finally offer a Predictive Analysis of where this might be going next.
A. THE RULING
SCOTUS Chief Justice John Roberts, who invented a tax to save Obamacare, is once again using the invention of a tax to save America’s enemies from the President’s foreign policy.
In his decision, he wrote, “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… IEEPA’s grant of authority to “regulate . . .importation. “
This is a claim that fails basic scrutiny if one goes back more than 50 years. Tariffs have been traditionally used as foreign policy levers mostly from the moment nations started using them, sometimes through congressional action, sometimes through Presidential action. The fact that an IEEPA justification hasn’t been used does not remotely attack the legitimacy of tariffs as foreign policy tools.
The most talked-about example came in 1971, when Nixon imposed an import surcharge of 10% on all dutiable imports. The move was intended to strengthen the American dollar by pressuring allies to open their markets to the U.S.
In 1974, congress passed the Jackson-Volt amendment to the Trade Act of 1974, which cut America’s communist enemies, like Russia and China, from Most-Favored-Nation status, effectively raising tariffs on all of them.
It was after 1974 that America began using tariffs less and less, switching instead to international law standards. By 1994, tariffs were all but nullified. For Roberts, history must not begin until after 1974.
Roberts continues, “IEEPA contains no reference to tariffs or duties. The Government points to no statute in which Congress used the word “regulate” to authorize taxation.”
Here Roberts is playing the tax semantic game, assuming the side effect of foreign policy, de facto taxation, is enough to nullify tariffs as a Presidential tool, yet he did not unilaterally deny the President’s power to levy tariffs.
By this logic, the IEEPA law is irrelevant to the point, it’s about tariffs as a tax only, and not a primary foreign policy decision that costs Americans money (as many foreign policy decisions do).
By Roberts’ logic, the President would be barred from making ANY foreign policy decision that could cost Americans money, for, by his logic, that would have the net effect of being a tax. In the case of Obamacare, the primary right being challenged was the government’s right to create a healthcare monopoly, a state corporation, which the constitution flat-out doesn’t permit. There is no explicit power to create a state healthcare system, but Roberts still allowed it then, because taxation makes it constitutional.
Roberts chose to deny the constitution and protect Obamacare by declaring it a tax. He rejected the higher principle being violated for the lesser principle being executable. Here, he is doing the opposite, he is rejecting the higher principle, the ESSENTIAL right of a President to enact foreign policy. He is ALSO rejecting the President’s power to define what an emergency is, despite the fact that his decision explicitly denies it.
On one hand, he faults the IEEA law for not EXPLICITELY allowing tariffs as a means of response within the IEEA framework, while on the other hand he CREATES explicit standards that have never existed in the history of this country, that tariffs should be viewed primarily as a tax, which ultimately undermines ALL tariffs.
Roberts continues his artless sophistry, claiming THIS as a legal consideration, “until now no President has read IEEPA to confer such power. We claim no special competence in matters of economics or foreign affairs. We claim only, as we must, the limited role assigned to us by Article III of the Constitution. Fulfilling that role, we hold that IEEPA does not authorize the President to impose tariffs.”
His anti-American reasoning is that the IEEPA must EXPLICITELY spell out the tools the President can use in carrying out that law. He does this by arguing that “regulate” doesn’t mean taxation, therefore the IEEPA doesn’t allow taxation to be used. The distinction, as the dissenting justices point out, is pedantic, devoid of any legal substance.
Article III imposes no power on SCOTUS to rule tariffs are primarily a tax and thus can’t be used in regulating the economy in a time of emergency, to be determined by the President, not the quisling Roberts. He fulfilled the role of traitor at least, and CCP collaborationist at worst, in his ruling, for only China will benefit from this anti-American death ruling.
This decision is on its face a gross violation of American rule of law. It is every bit as unconstitutional as the Obamacare ruling, a ruling Roberts made possible with his deciding vote.
This ruling shows the fundamental danger of allowing anti-American human beings like the SCOTUS 6 into American institutions, human beings that clearly do not understand or respect American rule of law. These “justices” are Progmericans at heart, aliens in the land they presume to judge. No progressive has any business being involved in American politics, let alone American courts.
This ruling is, in part, why I am calling on constitutional amendments to make citizenship an agreed-upon covenant (with citizens today grandfathered in) and to create a legal power to remove citizenship rights from citizens that openly advocate for the violation of rights of other citizens.
All gun control advocates would immediately lose their right to bear arms since they can’t respect the rights of their neighbors to be self-stewarded individuals, people who can defend themselves against all enemies, foreign and domestic (in the case of the Progmerican within).
If these amendments existed today, Roberts and the whole SCOTUS group would lose their office, their right to bear arms, their right to vote, and their right to speak sedition in public against the American people (as they did in this ruling).
In this instance, this ruling has set dangerous precedents that are sure to be exploited by Progmerican judges to destroy Rule of law even further. Now, the whisper of the tariff precedent has already been set, and, despite any cautions by Roberts and his cohort of Progmerican traitors to the contrary, the door is now wide open to end tariffs as a means of Presidential power altogether.
We will get into the consequence of this ruling, which reveals just how devastating this ruling is to American power, a consideration that never entered the minds of the quislings who made such an obviously unconstitutional decision. Their refusal to rule on the chaos of potential refunds by American companies and foreign powers reveals the cowardice of a ruling they knew would aid America’s enemies and cripple her in return. It is an obvious act of sabotage by Roberts and the other SCOTUS 6 traitors.
They did not want to put into the record that they are directly complicit in creating utter chaos for the American republic at a time when our very survival is in question. This is the type of ruling that should have immediately produced defiance from the Trump administration. It crossed the line from legally tenable to outright sedition, which is plain to see for Americans, but not so much for Progmericans (or their frenemy, the Neocon).
This SHOULD HAVE been the moment Trump declared war on the DNC-CCP. Instead, he looked for new loopholes to escape the unconstitutional ruling.
The overall ruling was more complex than this, as parts of the ruling had a full majority while one ruling had a plurality decision. That decision hopes to create an anti-American standard that congress must approve any decision the President makes on “significant issues.”
B. TRUMP’S RESPONSE
President Trump had a long rebuttal to the unconstitutional ruling, but the heart of his message was this:
“It’s my opinion that the court has been swayed by foreign interests and a political movement that is far smaller than people would ever think. It’s a small movement. I won by millions of votes, we won in a landslide. With all the cheating that went on, there was a lot of it, we still won in a landslide. Too big to rig.
But these people are obnoxious, ignorant and loud. They’re very loud. And I think certain justices are afraid of that. They don’t want to do the right thing. They’re afraid of it.
This was an important case to me, more as a symbol of economic national security and also, I would say, just for our country itself, so important, because we’re doing so well as a country. We’ve never done so well.
The good news is that there are methods, practices, statutes and authorities, as recognized by the entire court in this terrible decision — and also as recognized by Congress, which they referred to — that are even stronger than the IEEPA tariffs available to me as president of the United States.”
In this writer’s opinion, Trump is most likely right when he claims foreign influence and partisan interests (or fears of the DNC terror machine) behind this clearly badly written sophistry-pregnant slight-of-hand ruling. You have to really HATE America to read into the law such an uncharitable take as these anti-justices did.
Notice the President continues to call his measures “IEEPA tariffs.” This is in open defiance of the unjust ruling that claims a broadly written law must offer specific tools that can be used to accomplish it, when that hasn’t been the precedent in the past. The only time that applies is when laws SPECIFICALLY limit the tools that can be used to enforce them.
Yet, the President chose to speak out both sides of his mouth, on one side all but accusing them of colluding with America’s enemies, an act of the highest order of treason, while at the same time respecting the ruling by changing his approach to using tariffs as foreign policy tools.
As we talk about in our Final Thought on pg. xx (News War Machines), this President seems to want to preserve SOME Progmerican power for himself, otherwise, he would move to destroy it.
In his defense, if you know you will lose for sure by moving against your enemy, you might want to bide time while you build up your power and continue to erode theirs.
This writer is just not certain that’s the reality he faces. If it is, then he’s doing the right thing by holding his powder. If it isn’t, he’s missing a great opportunity to finish off the Progmericans, at least for a couple of decades before the next threat reconstitutes itself (and it will).
He has already enacted a global 10% tariff tax and says he will use other laws with proven tariff applications historically to get the job done. What he hasn’t addressed in detail is what to do about the refund demands already happening, including from foreign powers.
C. AMERICAN BUSINESS RESPONSE
Immediately after this ruling, the leftist-leaning U.S. Chamber of Commerce immediately called for “swift refunds of the impermissible tariffs.” Chief Policy Officer Neil Bradley attached his name to this action, a decision that might one day prove to be his undoing (and rightly so).
Joining this association was the National Retail Federation, which includes Walmart. They called for “a seamless process to refund the tariffs to U.S. importers.” They claim the refunds will be an “economic boost,” but for whom?
It won’t be an economic boost for a country diminished by an unconstitutional ruling. It will only embolden her enemies, which includes, apparently, these business associations (all taken over by Progmericans).
Walmart will be remembered for its failure here to stand up for America over corporate greed. The money they get back will NOT be passed on to the consumers, who’ve already paid for the tariff, it will go to the corporate leaders.
These were only the start of business associations that quickly lined up to get refunds, despite SCOTUS not ruling at all on the constitutionality of refund-seeking, or how that will come about. The ruling was so reckless they refused to create a mechanism to deal with the mess their ruling created. This is intentional sabotage at work, not judicial caution.
The President threatened these companies with worse deals if they tried to do what they are doing, choosing profit over American security. This writer hopes he follows through with that threat. If you think the left really opposes corporate power, witness their overwhelming support for the corporations seeking profit-taking over national well-being.
These companies prove these American businesses are not run by Americans at all, and as such we should move to nationalize the progressive businesses and sell them to Americans. This might seem ridiculous right now, but within a year or two tops, this call will be echoed by a lot more Americans than me.
D. FOREIGN POWERS RESPONSE
This is a quote from a Grok research pull we did for this paper. We asked Grok how the foreign powers reacted to this ruling. Here is what Grok said about China, “[China] Emerged as a significant beneficiary, with analysts noting a substantial reduction in effective U.S. tariff rates on Chinese goods (e.g., from around 32% to 24% in some estimates, as many IEEPA layers were removed while Section 301/232 tariffs persisted). China called for the U.S. to lift unilateral tariffs on trading partners and stated it would ‘comprehensively assess’ future U.S. changes while adjusting countermeasures as needed. This was seen as strengthening China’s negotiating position ahead of planned high-level talks.”
Grok itself recognizes the power this ruling gives to our current greatest enemy, China. This factor alone should have stopped the quislings from making such a sophistry-laden decision, one that invented a tax standard in favor of ending a President’s power to deal with existential threats at a pivotal point in our history.
By any stretch of the imagination, this was hardly a black and white issue, and legal experts were divided from the start on what the ruling “should be.” They had to take the most uncharitable view to get to the ruling that damages America the most, while empowering and enabling her worst enemies, including China.
While foreign powers might be less inclined to push aggressively for refunds (for fear of inviting Trump’s new tariff counters), they will now be even more incentivized to seek to influence these same judges to continue to rule in their favor, gutting the American presidency in preparation for creating the Progmerican one.
America’s military power is undisputed. Her enemies know this, and they rely on this SCOTUS, and similar quislings within American institutions, to undermine us with soft power from within, with Progmericans who are naturally more aligned with the CCP than George Washington.
PREDICTIVE ANALYSIS
So far, President Trump’s threats for more tariffs have not materialized. He has enacted the 10% global tariff, but he failed to follow through with his threat that he’d bump it up to 15%.
The President’s ability to use tariffs quickly, and to modify them just as quickly, might be all but gone after this ruling, a likely possibility that in and of itself should tell you why this ruling was wholly illegal and sabotaging to U.S. security in every way imaginable.
I’d add a caveat here: Tariff law is complex and somewhat untested until quite recently. There could be a rock-solid path for Trump going forward that is even unassailable by the best sophistic justices out there, but I am highly skeptical such a secret super law weapon exists.
This ruling signals to me either an emboldening of the Progmerican nation within us, or desperation. What Trump’s tariffs have been doing is hammering away at International Rule of Law, a game whose motte of “rule of law” hides its bailey of “diminish American and nation-state powers,” which is what International Law has largely morphed into. THIS is what SCOTUS was protecting, most likely due to threats or profit from foreign powers, including Progmerican organizations in America.
Now, Trump will have to return to those Progmerican international courts to make foreign policy moves against ongoing existential threats to our existence (ESPECIALLY from China, who has its own domestic existential problems).
Failure by the rearguard of the DNC, the RNC, to pass the SAVE Act, the act requiring photo ID and paper ballots for federal elections, will result in a DNC majority in the House, and possibly the Senate.
The DNC-CCP is already aligned with America’s existential enemy, China, so its power in the House will be continued to be used to cripple American power at the benefit of her enemies. To this end, expect impeachments that will come from the tariffs themselves, impeachments this writer believes this court knew full well they were legitimizing in advance.
Were emails or chats leaked one day showing collusion between the DNC and the justices to assure their ruling laid the groundwork for these impeachments, this writer would NOT be surprised. My understanding of human nature and our current reality of power strongly suggests this is highly probable (but not certain).
This writer has little confidence the GOP will muster enough votes and courage to force the SAVE Act through (as they could right now if the party were American, and not, at the top level at least, simply the DNC-CCP’s rearguard protector).
Trump has a few months to move fast to cripple our most pressing enemies, which right now are China, Russia, and Iran. He will not have the power to levy tariffs so easily through these other laws, which will limit his ability to quickly respond to actions by our adversaries in response; but he’ll still have some power. The question is, will he use them?
I am certain his lawyers are already working on plans to justify tariffs, and the enemy, the DNC-CCP and its allies (Progmerican-controlled business associations), are working hard to file lawsuits. These lawsuits will be filed with favorable district judges predisposed to stop Trump’s programs, if for no other reason than they believe they are stopping the Nazis by doing so (constitutional law be damned).
I expect courts favorable to the DNC-CCP to continue to allow the degradation of our security by rubber-stamping foreign powers’ efforts to use our own courts to sabotage our power. I expect some exceptions, as there are still American judges in our courts.
At the SCOTUS level, I expect this court to side with the resistance, and wherever sophistry can remotely be applied to justify the denial of Trump’s policies (to defeat Hitler, in their minds), they will do so. However, there are limitations, even for this rogue court. Some degree of a semblance of Americanism must still be maintained, at least for now.
For that reason, I expect SCOTUS to not fully shut down Trump’s tariff powers, but from here until the first District Court injunction, he has a limited time to act decisively using tariffs to target our enemies for economic warfare.
What many do not realize is this, American pax is over and everyone knows it. There is a new real scramble for power that will leave the losers in destitute circumstances. The race to build the one AI machine to rule them all is on, and Trump recognizes this; THAT is why he chose to use tariffs in this unprecedented, but legal (unprecedented doesn’t equal illegal, Mr. Roberts) way, for he understood the stakes are high.
The world is resetting its power structure, and competition is fierce to not become a subservient to the greater power, and it’s a competition America can lose, especially with Progmerica still fighting to take over from within, aided as they are by quislings in our courts, including our highest court, which should be renamed SCOP, the Supreme Court of Progmerican, which is NO AMERICA at all.
FURTHER RESOURCES:
US Tariffs Gude by Country; US Goods – Brenda Kecskes
American Tariffs From Plymouth Rock to McKinley – Daniel Harriman
Encyclopedia of Tariffs in U.S. History – Edited and Compiled by Cynthia Clark
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