Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Wednesday said he came away from a Supreme Court hearing on the legality of President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs feeling “very, very optimistic.”
Bessent told Fox Business Network’s “Kudlow” program he thought plaintiffs challenging Trump’s use of a 1977 law to justify tariffs had “almost embarrassed themselves,” and he was confident the Supreme Court would reverse a lower court ruling that the tariffs were illegal.
Asked how the administration would return the large amounts of funds already collected if the Supreme Court upheld the ruling, Bessent, who attended the arguments on Wednesday, said, “We’ll cross that bridge if we come to it, but I’m confident we won’t have to.”
Justices heard more than 2-1/2 hours of oral arguments on the case on Wednesday, with both conservative and liberal justices raising doubts about whether a 1977 law meant for use during national emergencies gave Trump the power to impose tariffs or whether the Republican president had intruded on the powers of Congress.
Conservative Chief Justice John Roberts told U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer, arguing for the administration, that the tariffs were “the imposition of taxes on Americans, and that has always been the core power of Congress.”
The tariffs — taxes on imported goods that are paid by importers in the United States — could add up to trillions of dollars for the U.S. government over the next decade. The U.S. Constitution gives Congress the authority to issue taxes and tariffs.
Asked about comments by Trump and himself touting the amount of revenue being generated, Bessent told reporters the duties being collected were “coincident” and amounted to a “shrinking ice cube” that would generate less tax income over time.
As that happened, however, increased domestic manufacturing spurred by higher import costs would generate more revenue from income tax, resulting in a balanced result, he said.
Trump has heaped pressure on the Supreme Court to preserve tariffs that he has leveraged as a key economic and foreign policy tool.
A ruling against Trump would mark a significant departure for the court, which has backed him in a series of decisions in areas as varied as his crackdown on immigration, the firing of federal agency officials, and banning transgender troops.
Trump invoked the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA, to impose the tariffs on nearly every U.S. trading partner – the first president to use the law for this purpose. The administration has asked the Supreme Court for a swift ruling in this case, but it remains unclear when a decision could come.