Lutnick insists Trump will win tariffs case despite Supreme Court skepticism

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick predicted late Wednesday that the Supreme Court will rule in favor of President Trump’s tariff policies despite skepticism from some justices.

“The justices were on the president’s side,” Lutnick told Fox News’s Sean Hannity. “You’re hearing it here from me, President Trump is going to win this case.”

Oral arguments in the case, brought by Democratic officials in 12 states and five small businesses in April, occurred earlier Wednesday. 

During the nearly three-hour hearing, multiple justices, including Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch and Sonia Sotomayor, expressed concerns with the administration’s justification for the president wielding such broad authority over tariffs.

The initial suit against Trump says that Congress, not the president, is authorized to impose tariffs on foreign imports. The administration, meanwhile, has argued that the president has such authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 (IEEPA) during a national emergency which the president declared in April, citing the country's trade deficits with foreign partners and the flow of fentanyl from Canada, China and Mexico.

In May, the U.S. Court of International Trade ruled that IEEPA does not grant the president such powers, a ruling upheld by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in August. 

Roberts said in court Wednesday that the administration’s justification “is being used for the power to impose tariffs on any product, from any country, for any amount, for any length of time."

“I’m not suggesting it’s not there, but it does seem like that’s major authority,” the chief justice added.

Barrett and Gorsuch, two of Trump’s three nominees to the court, questioned the precedent for the administration’s justification and the downstream effects of such an expansion of authority, respectively. 

Several justices, including Roberts and Sotomayor, also raised the “major questions” doctrine, which limits Congress’s ability to delegate authority to the executive branch when the former’s intentions are unclear.

The high court will now draft its opinion behind closed doors.