Tariff Decision: Setback or Boon?
This week, Punch the monkey made some new friends. And oh yeah... the Supreme Court came out with something about tariffs.
Clarice Feldman | February 22, 2026
Will this week’s Supreme Court decision limit the use of tariffs as a foreign policy tool of presidents, or did it set up a firewall against future leftist chief executives while allowing this president to continue to utilize other means to the same end? Is the decision momentous or of little consequence?
A lot of attention this week was focused on Alysia Liu’s stunning Olympic performance and the tale of a baby monkey in a Japanese zoo (name Anglicized to “Punch”). Punch was abandoned by his mother, had been raised and bonded to his caretakers, who needed to integrate him into the monkey troop, which rejected him. Noticing his distress and the bullying he was receiving, the keepers gifted him a large orangutan doll, which he hugged and carried everywhere. Finally, he found a foster mom to hug and playmates, and all is well at the zoo.
In the meantime, the Supreme Court, after months of consideration, resolved 6-3 against the Administration in one of the two consolidated cases: Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump and Trump v. V.O.S. Solutions. In the first case, the Court denied that the federal district court had jurisdiction, ruling that the Court of International Trade had exclusive jurisdiction of tariff disputes.
The main and dissenting opinions are very lengthy, but the case, at a minimum, holds that the IEEPA (International Emergency Economic Powers Act), which was the basis for the challenge in the V.O.S. case, cannot be used to raise revenue.
Justice Clarence Thomas strongly objected: “It’s the same basic statutory construction that Nixon used in his day to levy tariffs. And nobody at the time questioned the meaning of those words. So again, the Supreme Court is torturing the plain meaning of the statute. It’s a shameful thing.”
But except for constitutional scholars, most of us are more curious about the impact of the ruling, and for many, it is inconsequential and may even strengthen Trump’s hand.
more
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2026/02/tariff_decision_setback_or_boon.html
