Trump tariff ruling does not mean the end of U.S. trade wars. What to know – National

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Friday that U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs on Canada and other countries are unlawful — but that doesn’t mean an end to Trump’s global trade wars.

The ruling only affects the tariffs Trump imposed under emergency powers, including his so-called “reciprocal” tariffs and separate duties on Canada related to fentanyl. It also means Trump can no longer use that authority to threaten or impose additional tariffs whenever he sees fit.

As Trump himself pointed out after the ruling, the decision does not address several other tariffs on specific sectors like steel, aluminum and autos, which will remain in place. Those were imposed under a U.S. law known as Section 232, which remains available for Trump to use in the future.

Trump also said he will use a different authority to impose a global 10 per cent tariff, effectively replacing the global baseline tariff rate that was truck down Friday.

3:11
Trump ‘disagrees’ with Supreme Court ruling, imposes new 10% global tariff ‘effective immediately’

Questions also remain on whether the government will be forced to refund the extra costs paid by American businesses due to the now-unlawful tariffs, which the court’s ruling does not address.

“This really guarantees more uncertainty and likely more tariffs down the road, both globally speaking but possibly for Canada as well,” said Matthew Holmes, executive vice-president at the Canadian Chamber of Commerce.

“It’s certainly not the end of this never-ending tariff story. It’s just a new chapter.”

Here’s what to know about the decision and what happens next.

The case involved a pair of lawsuits that challenged Trump’s use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEPPA), a 1977 law that allows the president to manage economic transactions during an emergency.

Trump had argued the law’s language of regulating imports allowed him to impose tariffs as a response to two emergencies he declared early last year: one about fentanyl trafficking from Canada, Mexico and China, and another regarding historic trade deficits with dozens of other countries.

Canada faced a 35 per cent rate under those fentanyl tariffs at the time of the Supreme Court’s ruling, with a lower 10 per cent rate on energy and fertilizer products like potash.

However, Trump had exempted goods that were traded under the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement on free trade (CUSMA), meaning those goods faced no tariff at all.

Prime Minister Mark Carney has repeatedly pointed out that roughly 85 per cent of Canadian exports to the U.S. fall under that CUSMA exemption.

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“What this does for domestic entities is kind of interesting, because we lose that preferential access under that zero per cent rate,” said Robert Glasgow, an international trade lawyer based in Toronto.

“But complying with getting that zero per cent rate, getting those rules of origin and the certificates of origin, can be costly and difficult. … So those compliance costs now come down.”

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Bessent asked if U.S. would drop all tariffs if Canada did the same: ‘Absolutely not’

Trump has imposed a series of other, sector-specific tariffs on several industries using Section 232 of the U.S. Trade Expansion Act, which allows the president to address “excessive” foreign imports deemed a risk to national security.

The law requires the U.S. Commerce Department to investigate those imports and reach a conclusion justifying the tariffs, which can take months to complete.

Section 232 tariffs have been imposed on steel, aluminum and copper at a rate of 50 per cent; automobiles, heavy trucks and auto parts not compliant with CUSMA at a 25 per cent rate; and some furniture, kitchen cabinets and vanities at 25 per cent.

A 10 per cent tariff was also imposed on softwood lumber under Section 232, on top of existing and separate anti-dumping duties.

All of those tariffs remain in place despite the Supreme Court decision, and Section 232 remains a tool that Trump can use in the future.

Trump said Friday he would sign an executive order imposing a 10 per cent global tariff under Section 122 of the U.S. Trade Act “over and above our normal tariffs already being charged.”

The law allows presidents to address trade deficits with tariffs, but only up to 15 per cent and for no longer than 150 days.

Trump also said his administration was initiating “several” investigations under Section 301 of the Trade Act. That statute is similar to Section 232 but tasks the U.S. Trade Representative with those probes.

It has been used by Trump and other presidents in the past to go after countries like China in particular for “unfair” trading practices.

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Canada has ‘finished’ internal review of CUSMA: Carney

Trump suggested he may go even further than financial barriers on trade, including possible complete embargos on imports, arguing the court had given him the authority to do so.

“Now the court has given me the unquestioned right to ban all sorts of things from coming into our country, to destroy foreign countries — a much more powerful right than many people ever thought we even had — but not the right to charge a fee,” he said. “How crazy is that?”

Glasgow said before Trump’s remarks that the administration won’t be stopped by the court’s decision.

“It’s not the end of the war,” Glasgow said. “There’s still a lot of conflict left … and I think that they’re going to try to find every underhanded trick they can to try to impose more and greater tariffs.”

The ruling leaves one major question unanswered: whether American businesses that paid the extra tariff costs will be refunded.

“We’ve taken in hundreds of billions of dollars — not millions, hundreds of billions of dollars,” Trump said.

“Wouldn’t you think they would have put one sentence in there saying (either) keep the money or don’t keep the money? I guess it has to get litigated for the next two years.”

Several large and medium-sized businesses, including Costco, have already sued to ensure they are refunded in the event of the tariffs being struck down.

We Pay the Tariffs, a coalition of small U.S. businesses that signed onto the Supreme Court case, launched a signature collection campaign moments after Friday’s ruling to appeal to the government for refunds.

The group has said that revenues from all tariffs imposed by Trump totalled a record US$175 billion between March and October of last year. An analysis this week by the JPMorganChase Institute said tariff payments by midsize businesses tripled in 2025 compared to the year before.

2:02
U.S. treasury secretary admits Americans are paying for Trump’s tariffs

“The administration’s only responsible course of action now is to establish a fast, efficient, and automatic refund process that returns tariff money to the businesses that paid it,” executive director Dan Anthony said in a statement.

“Small businesses cannot afford to wait months or years while bureaucratic delays play out, nor can they afford expensive litigation just to recover money that was unlawfully collected from them in the first place. These businesses need their money back now.”

Lawyers acknowledged during November’s oral arguments in the Supreme Court that refunding the tariffs would create a “mess” for the government — something Justice Brett Kavanaugh highlighted in his dissenting opinion Friday.

“The mechanism there would be to work with your U.S. customs broker or U.S. council to file refund requests with U.S. Customs and Border Patrol,” Glasgow said.

Because that mechanism is not laid out in the court decision, he continued, “this is going to have to be a case-by-case attempt to retrieve the money.”

—with files from Global’s Touria Izri