The Supreme Court ruled on Friday that President Donald Trump does not have the authority to impose tariffs on imports coming into the United States from virtually every country. This could ease costs for U.S. companies that rely heavily on overseas manufacturing, including Apple.
In the months since Trump began broadly imposing tariffs, Apple paid billions in these import taxes. And it rearranged its supply chain to move some product assembly away from China, the country that the president made the primary focus of his tariff policy.
Sweeping Trump tariffs get struck down
Under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, the president has the authority to impose tariffs in a crisis. But it doesn’t define what constitutes a trade emergency, so Trump simply declared one whenever he wanted to tax a country’s imports into the United States. The result was $133 billion in fees as of the end of 2025.
But in a decision that limits the scope of executive authority under the IEEPA, the high court said the Trump administration overstepped in imposing sweeping tariffs on a broad range of imported goods.
“The Framers did not vest any part of the taxing power in the Executive Branch,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote, according to Reuters. Only Congress has the power to tax.
The decision was 6–3, underscoring that it was not a close call. Notably, two of the justices Trump appointed to the court voted against him.
What this means for Apple
Despite Trump’s claim that exporting countries bear the cost of tariffs, Apple has paid billions in taxes on imports from China and other countries. Apple paid roughly $1.4 billion in tariffs in the December quarter, for example.
But even though the Supreme Court has now struck down the tariffs as unlawful, there’s currently no system in place for Apple to get that money back.
“The Court says nothing today about whether, and if so how, the Government should go about returning the billions of dollars that it has collected from importers. But that process is likely to be a ‘mess, as was acknowledged at oral argument,” wrote dissenting judge Brett Kavanaugh.
Companies paying Trump’s “reciprocal” and emergency tariffs will likely have to pursue refunds through administrative protests or litigation, and the process could be complex and drawn out.
Limit to Trump’s power
Perhaps more importantly though, the high court’s decision means Trump no longer has unlimited control over tariffs. For example, he doesn’t have the power to threaten Apple with a special 25% import tax on every iPhone made outside of the United States, as he did last spring. And that means more stability for Apple.
Still, despite the removal of these import taxes, it’s unlikely the company will reverse course on expanding production outside China. The move to assemble more iPhones in India, Vietnam, etc. is also being driven by other factors — the pandemic clearly revealed the problems of depending too heavily on one country.
Ed Hardy has been writing full-time about tech for 25 years, and using it for much longer than that. His intro to Apple was a Macintosh Classic II (which he still has), but now he uses a 13-inch iPad Pro as his primary computer. He’s written for NotebookReview, TabletPCReview, and Brighthand, as well as other sites.
