Donald Trump again grumbled about how “terrible” it was that the Supreme Court struck down his highly touted tariff policy earlier this year.
Trump, 79, said at a White House small business summit that he hates the idea of having to refund approximately $160 billion to importers. Top companies on that list include Nike, Walmart, and Home Depot.
“We had an unfortunate ruling out of the Supreme Court, but the good news is I’m able to do it a different way. They said use the other way. There was no reason for that. It was terrible. Actually terrible,” Trump said.
The court ruled that the president didn’t have the authority to impose tariffs under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), which has historically been used to apply limited sanctions and other economic controls. The Trump administration responded by instead announcing a 10 percent global baseline tariff under the 1974 Trade Act.
“It will have no impact other than I hate to pay people back tariffs—$159 billion,“ Trump continued, lamenting how the law he violated didn’t allow the government to keep the money it had generated thus far.
”A little half-sentence: ‘Any money taken in to this point does not have to be paid back,’" he fantasized. “We would have saved $159 billion, and I cannot figure it out. How could anybody do that? But they did it.”
Trump then claimed that the revised tariffs are “a little bit more complex,” but ultimately “better.”
A few weeks ago, Trump similarly called the Supreme Court’s February tariff ruling “completely ridiculous.”
“Handing over 159 Billion Dollars in Tariff refunds to people who have been Ripping Off our Country for years, is unexplainable,” he wrote in a Truth Social post. “One little sentence would have stopped this record setting payment from having to be made. It is a travesty!”
In that post, Trump also attacked justices for a ruling they haven’t even made yet: whether to side with the administration in its push to end birthright citizenship.
Justices had “nasty, one sided questions on the country destroying subject of Birthright Citizenship, something which virtually NO OTHER COUNTRY IN THE WORLD IS STUPID ENOUGH TO ALLOW,” he wrote of the oral arguments that he attended before leaving partway through.
The Supreme Court and its three Trump appointees—Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett—are expected to rule on birthright citizenship in June.
The court’s press office did not immediately respond to a Daily Beast inquiry.
