The Supreme Court Ruled Against Trump’s Tariffs. Now What?
最高法院裁定特朗普关税违法。接下来怎么办？
Thanks for reading! If you haven’t subscribed, please click the button below:
感谢阅读！如果您尚未订阅，请点击下方按钮：
Subscribe now
立即订阅
By subscribing, you’ll join over 75,000 people who read Apricitas!
订阅后，您将加入超过75,000名阅读Apricitas的读者行列！
Yesterday, the Supreme Court struck down the majority of Trump’s tariffs in the largest legal blow to Trump’s 2nd-term economic policy. “The Framers gave ‘Congress alone’ the power to impose tariffs during peacetime,”
said Chief Justice Roberts
, “and the foreign affairs implications of tariffs do not make it any more likely that Congress would relinquish its tariff power through vague language, or without careful limits. Accordingly, the President must ‘point to clear congressional authorization’ to justify his extraordinary assertion of that power. He cannot.”
昨天，最高法院驳回了特朗普的大部分关税，这是对特朗普第二任期经济政策的最大法律打击。“开国元勋们将和平时期征收关税的权力‘仅授予国会’，” 首席大法官罗伯茨表示 ，“而关税的外交影响并不会使国会更有可能通过模糊的语言或在没有谨慎限制的情况下放弃其关税权力。因此，总统必须‘指出明确的国会授权’来证明其非凡的权力主张。他不能。”
The court thus ruled that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) did not give the president the authority to impose tariffs, meaning all of the country-level tariffs—50% on Brazilian goods, 15% on imports from the EU, etc—have been rendered null and void. The sectoral tariffs on steel, aluminum, cars, furniture, and other goods used the more legally robust Section 232 national security tariff authority from the 1962 Trade Expansion Act and will thus stay in place unchanged, as will the Section 301 tariffs used primarily against China that predate 2025. Yet the country-level tariffs made up the vast majority of Trump’s overall trade war, representing roughly
73% of the total new tariff revenue
since he returned to office.
法院因此裁定，《国际紧急经济权力法》（IEEPA）并未赋予总统征收关税的权力，这意味着所有针对国家的关税——如对巴西商品征收50%、对欧盟进口产品征收15%等——均已失效。而对钢铁、铝、汽车、家具和其他商品征收的行业关税，则依据1962年《贸易扩展法》中法律上更为稳固的232条款国家安全关税授权，因此将保持不变；主要针对中国、早于2025年的301条款关税也同样继续有效。然而，国家层面的关税构成了特朗普整体贸易战的绝大部分，约占
新增关税总收入的73%
自他重返白宫以来。
However, the White House and Supreme Court both knew that
“many current federal laws continue to grant the President expansive tariff authority”
outside of IEEPA, although these pathways come with more time and procedural regulations. Trump responded to the court ruling by immediately invoking one of those other federal laws—Section 122 of the 1974 Trade Act—to impose a 10% baseline tariff to replace the IEEPA tariffs.
然而，白宫和最高法院都知道，在IEEPA之外，
“许多现行联邦法律仍授予总统广泛的关税权力”
尽管这些途径需要更多时间和程序性规定。特朗普对法院裁决的回应是立即援引另一项联邦法律——1974年《贸易法》第122条——征收10%的基准关税，以取代IEEPA关税。
Section 122 can only be used for flat tariffs of up to 15%, with no between-country variation allowed. The administration has thus settled on a 10% tariff—the lowest prior country-level tariff rate—while the important tariff exemptions for computers, energy, pharmaceuticals, smartphones, certain foodstuffs, and most USMCA-compliant goods all remained. The net effect is that average US tariff rates will dip roughly 3 percentage points in the wake of this ruling, and no imported goods will see a net increase in tariffs.
第122条仅适用于最高15%的统一关税，且不允许国别差异。因此，政府选择了10%的关税——这是此前国家层面关税中的最低税率——同时，对计算机、能源、药品、智能手机、某些食品以及大多数符合《美墨加协定》（USMCA）的商品的重要关税豁免仍然保留。净效果是，在这一裁决之后，美国平均关税税率将下降约3个百分点，且任何进口商品的关税都不会净增加。
Yet Section 122 only allows tariffs to persist for 150 days without congressional authorization, which remains unlikely. It also rests on some shaky legal footing of its own, having been written to empower the President to
prevent international payments problems within the fixed exchange rate system that no longer exists.
然而，第122条仅允许关税在没有国会授权的情况下持续150天，而获得国会授权的可能性仍然不大。此外，该条款自身的法律基础也不稳固，它原本是为了让总统在已不复存在的固定汇率体系内预防国际支付问题而制定的。
There will certainly be legal challenges to this new Section 122 executive order in time, but before its 150 days are up, the administration could reconstruct much of the pre-ruling tariff regime using the
more legally secure sector-level Section 232 “national security” investigations
and
country-level Section 301 “unfair foreign trade practices” investigations
.
针对这项新的第122条行政命令，法律挑战必将接踵而至，但在其150天期限届满之前，政府可以利用
法律上更为稳固的行业层面232条款“国家安全”调查
和
国家层面301条款“不公平对外贸易做法”调查
重建大部分裁决前的关税体系。
Still, this is the most significant restriction on Trump’s trade war capabilities since he retook office. Without IEEPA, the President can no longer wake up in the morning and decide to raise tariffs on Indonesian goods before lunch. The Section 232 and 301 processes are much more bureaucratic, taking months to put together the proper paperwork and giving businesses more ability to directly challenge the specific “national security” or “unfair foreign trade practices” justifications in court. Plus, since the US collected more than $150B in taxes under executive orders now deemed retrospectively illegal, we could see a rather massive refund to importers. It’s an important win in placing some constraints on executive authority and ensuring Congress retains the power of the purse.
尽管如此，这是自特朗普重新执政以来对其贸易战能力最重大的限制。没有IEEPA，总统再也无法早上醒来、在午饭前决定提高对印尼商品的关税。232条款和301条款的程序官僚气息浓厚得多，需要数月时间准备相应文件，并让企业有更大能力在法庭上直接质疑具体的“国家安全”或“不公平对外贸易做法”理由。此外，由于美国根据现已被追溯认定为非法的行政命令征收了超过1500亿美元的税款，我们可能会看到进口商获得相当可观的退款。这是在限制行政权力、确保国会保留财政权方面取得的一次重要胜利。
Plus, while US tariffs remain extremely high compared to their pre-Trump equilibrium, they have meaningfully eased even before this week. In November,
the US finally exempted coffee, bananas, and other foodstuffs that climatologically cannot be produced at a sufficient scale in the US
. The Trump administration had also eased tariffs on Chinese goods down to the lowest level since the start of his second term after negotiations in Beijing. Tariffs on many Indian goods were reduced by 32% in a deal signed in early February. Tariff revenue was running at roughly 350B annualized in the last two months of data, and will likely fall more in the January and February numbers. That’s still much higher than in 2024, but a meaningful retreat in tariff intensity.
此外，尽管美国关税与特朗普之前的均衡水平相比仍然极高，但即使在本周之前，关税已经明显放宽。11月，
美国终于豁免了咖啡、香蕉和其他在美国因气候原因无法大规模生产的食品
。在北京谈判后，特朗普政府还将对中国商品的关税降至其第二任期开始以来的最低水平。在2月初签署的一项协议中，许多印度商品的关税被降低了32%。关税收入在高峰期年化运行约为4000亿美元，但在最近两个月的统计数据中已降至接近3500亿美元，而且1月和2月的数据可能会进一步下降。这仍远高于2024年，但关税强度已显著回落。
The Trump administration could use this ruling as an excuse to continue that partial trade war retreat. Yet in reality, the next few months are more likely to reverse the small amount of trade reliberalization America saw this winter. Lawyers will be working tirelessly to recreate the tariff levels that existed in January. Donald Trump will go back to making ever-changing tariff threats (
as of writing, he now claims the 10% 122 tariffs will be raised to 15% “in the next short number of months”
, though no formal executive order exists yet, so it’s unclear if this will actually happen or what the details would look like). Even though the Supreme Court has reined in the worst of Trump’s trade war, tariffs and their associated chaos are not going away any time soon.
特朗普政府可以利用这一裁决作为继续部分撤出贸易战的借口。但实际上，未来几个月更有可能逆转美国今年冬天出现的少量贸易再自由化。律师们将不懈努力，以恢复到1月份存在的关税水平。唐纳德·特朗普将重新开始不断变化的关税威胁（
截至撰写本文时，他声称10%的122条款关税将在“未来短短几个月内”提高到15%
，但目前尚无正式行政命令，因此尚不清楚这是否会真正发生，具体细节也不得而知）。尽管最高法院已经遏制了特朗普贸易战最糟糕的部分，但关税及其相关混乱不会很快消失。
Subscribe now
立即订阅
How Have the Tariffs Been Going?
关税情况如何？
More than a year into the second Trump administration, it’s worth pausing to ask if all these tariffs are even achieving their desired policy outcomes. The ostensible goal was to reshore manufacturing production, create good-paying blue-collar jobs, and close the trade deficit. On the jobs front, the US manufacturing sector continues to lose jobs, now joined by declining employment in transportation and warehousing, while growth in construction has fallen dramatically. For an
administration rhetorically tying itself to the fortunes of blue-collar workers
, this is an especially dismal outcome.
特朗普第二届政府已执政一年有余，值得停下来问问，这些关税是否真的达到了预期的政策效果。表面目标是让制造业生产回流，创造高薪蓝领工作，并消除贸易逆差。在就业方面，美国制造业持续流失工作岗位，运输和仓储业的就业也在下降，而建筑业增长则大幅放缓。对于一个
在言辞上与蓝领工人命运紧密相连的政府
来说，这是一个尤其令人沮丧的结果。
Meanwhile, the massive increase in US tariffs is also driving up prices. Goods prices are up more than 1.7% over the last year, with goods excluding food & energy up 1.9% and durable goods up 2.1%. Those numbers are low compared to the worst of the 2021-2022 inflation surge, when prices were rising more than 6% per year, but they are still meaningfully higher than normal. In fact, manufactured products tend to experience rapid price deflation, so a 2% growth rate is 3-4% above normal levels.
与此同时，美国关税的大幅增加也在推高物价。过去一年，商品价格上涨超过1.7%，其中剔除食品和能源后的商品上涨1.9%，耐用消费品上涨2.1%。与2021-2022年通胀飙升最严重时期（当时物价年涨幅超过6%）相比，这些数字较低，但仍明显高于正常水平。事实上，制成品往往会出现快速的价格通缩，因此2%的增长率比正常水平高出3-4个百分点。
Durable goods inflation, for example, is currently running faster than at any point between 1994 and 2020.
Americans, not foreigners, and American consumers especially,
have been paying the vast majority of the tariffs.
例如，耐用消费品的通胀率目前比1994年至2020年间的任何时候都要快。
美国人，而不是外国人，尤其是美国消费者，
承担了绝大部分关税。
Are the tariffs driving a supposed reindustrialization investment boom? No, real construction of factories has continually declined throughout Trump’s term as CHIPS Act & IRA projects are completed, while tariffs weigh on other sectors. The only place where America undoubtedly has an investment boom is
in computers and data centers
, which remain completely exempt from Trump’s tariffs.
这些关税是否推动了所谓的再工业化投资热潮？没有，随着《芯片法案》和《通胀削减法案》项目的完成，特朗普任期内的实际工厂建设持续下降，而关税则拖累了其他行业。美国唯一无疑存在投资热潮的领域是
计算机和数据中心
，这些领域完全不受特朗普关税的影响。
Finally, did the “Liberation Day” tariffs achieve their ostensible purpose of “fixing” the US trade deficit? No,
annual net imports of goods & services hit another all-time high in 2025
, still well over $1T even after adjusting for inflation. The reduction of net imports in the last three quarters of the year did not make up for the fact that imports surged at the beginning of 2025 as businesses stockpiled ahead of the tariffs. Much of the downward swing in trade is just reduced imports of pharmaceuticals, which remain exempt from tariffs but looked to be under threat at the beginning of last year. Combined, these are not the results of a working policy regime torn apart by one court ruling, but a regressive tax struggling to achieve its supposed economic aims.
最后，“解放日”关税是否实现了“修复”美国贸易逆差的表面目的？没有，
2025年商品和服务年度净进口再次创下历史新高
，即使经通胀调整后仍远高于1万亿美元。年内最后三个季度净进口的减少，并没有弥补2025年初企业抢在关税生效前囤货导致的进口激增。贸易下行的很大一部分只是药品进口减少，药品仍然免征关税，但在去年年初似乎受到威胁。综合来看，这些不是被一项法院裁决撕裂的现行政策体系的成果，而是一种累退税，难以实现其所谓的经济目标。
Subscribe now
立即订阅
Conclusions
结论
Perhaps worst of all, none of the uncertainty that characterized early 2025 trade policy has actually been resolved amidst all this. One year ago, Trump was repeatedly imposing and retracting ruinous tariffs on products from Mexico and Canada,
our closest neighbors and some of our largest trading partners,
before the President largely backed off in March and just exempted the vast majority of Canadian and Mexican goods. Besides some tweaks to car and metals tariffs, American trade policy with the two countries has been fundamentally unchanged since then. There still is no “deal” with either Mark Carney or Claudia Sheinbaum, even the more vacuous kind signed with the EU or Japan, and there is very little honest effort in the way of negotiations despite how important these countries’ goods are to the US economy.
也许最糟糕的是，2025年初贸易政策的不确定性在这场风波中并未真正得到解决。一年前，特朗普反复对来自墨西哥和加拿大的产品征收和撤回毁灭性关税——
我们最亲密的邻国和我们一些最大的贸易伙伴——
直到3月份总统基本退让，并豁免了绝大多数加拿大和墨西哥商品。除了对汽车和金属关税进行一些调整外，美国与这两国的贸易政策此后基本没有变化。目前仍未与马克·卡尼或克劳迪娅·辛鲍姆达成任何“协议”，甚至连与欧盟或日本签署的那种空洞协议都没有；尽管这些国家的商品对美国经济至关重要，但在谈判方面几乎没有诚意的努力。
Instead, Trump is regularly threatening to
ground the Canadian-made regional jets that form the backbone of regional carriers
,
block the Gordie Howe International Bridge built to connect Detroit and Windsor
, or
impose 100% tariffs on Canadian goods
. Many of these threats barely register as news stories in the United States because of their sheer volume and how infrequently Trump actually follows through. Yet he sometimes does, like with the 50% tariffs on Brazilian or Indian goods, making all his threats impossible to completely write off.
相反，特朗普经常威胁要
停飞构成支线航空公司骨干的加拿大制造支线喷气机
，
阻止为连接底特律和温莎而修建的戈迪·豪国际大桥
，或
对加拿大商品征收100%的关税
。由于此类威胁数量庞大，且特朗普很少真正兑现，其中许多在美国几乎算不上新闻。但他有时确实会兑现，例如对巴西或印度商品征收50%的关税，这使得他所有的威胁都不可能完全置之不理。
How should businesses in countries like the UK, which have supposed “deals” with Trump to keep the tariffs on their goods at only 10%, feel about today’s announcement that all tariffs will eventually go to 15%? Should they ignore it and hope that nobody drafts the executive order, like what happened with the 100% tariffs threatened against Canada? Should they lobby for even more
nebulous concessions to keep the tariff rate low
, like Switzerland had to do? What should they tell their US business partners or customers? Why should they sign the next “deal” if Trump so quickly reneges on this one?
对于像英国这样与特朗普达成所谓“协议”、使其商品关税保持在10%的国家，企业该如何看待今天宣布的所有关税最终将升至15%的消息呢？他们是否应该忽略这一消息，并希望没有人起草行政命令，就像对加拿大威胁征收100%关税时发生的那样？他们是否应该游说争取更
模糊的让步以维持低关税税率
，就像瑞士不得不做的那样？他们应该告诉美国商业伙伴或客户什么？如果特朗普这么快就违背了这一“协议”，他们为什么还要签署下一个“协议”？
This ruling should have forced some introspection from the Trump administration. Why did we rest our signature economic policy plans on shaky legal theories? Why has it not achieved its desired policy aims?
Why are we forced to exempt the vast majority of imports from tariffs to keep the economy functioning?
Why can’t we decide on the right tariff rate and keep it there for an extended period of time? Instead, they’re likely to retreat back into the tariff chaos that has dragged down the economy throughout the last year.
这一裁决本应迫使特朗普政府进行一些反思。为什么我们要把标志性的经济政策计划建立在摇摇欲坠的法律理论上？为什么它没有达到预期的政策目标？
为什么我们被迫豁免绝大多数进口商品的关税以维持经济运转？
为什么我们不能确定一个合适的关税税率并长期保持？相反，他们很可能会退回过去一年拖累经济的关税混乱之中。
Thanks for reading! To receive more new posts on economic data analysis, consider subscribing!
感谢阅读！要获取更多关于经济数据分析的新文章，请考虑订阅！