An aerial view of a cargo ship being loaded with shipping containers at the Port of Baltimore in Baltimore, Maryland, on Aug. 7, 2025. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Friday that Donald Trump exceeded his authority in imposing a swath of tariffs that upended global trade, blocking a key tool the president has wielded to impose his economic agenda. AFP-Yonhap

NEW YORK — The nation's highest court struck down some of U.S. President Donald Trump's most sweeping tariffs on Friday, in a 6-3 decision ruling that he overstepped his authority when using an emergency powers law to justify new taxes on goods from nearly every country in the world.

Trump has launched a barrage of new tariffs over the last year. Despite Friday's ruling, many sectoral levies remain in place — and the president has already said that he'll turn to other options for more import taxes. But the Supreme Court decision upends a core set of tariffs that Trump imposed using the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA.

IEEPA authorizes the president to broadly regulate commerce after declaring a national emergency. Over the years, presidents have turned to this law dozens of times, often to impose sanctions on other countries. But Trump was the first to use it to implement tariffs.

Here's a look at the now-overturned tariffs Trump imposed using IEEPA — and other levies that still stand today.

Trump used IEEPA to slap import taxes on nearly every country in the world last spring. On April 2, which Trump called Liberation Day, he imposed “reciprocal” tariffs of up to 50 percent on goods from dozens of countries — and a baseline 10 percent tariff on just about everyone else.

The 10 percent tax kicked in early April. But the bulk of Liberation Day's higher levies got delayed by several months, and many rates were revised over time (in some cases after new “framework” agreements). Most went into effect on Aug. 7.

The national emergency underlying these tariffs, Trump argued at the time, was the long-running gap between what the U.S. sells and what it buys from the rest of the world. Still, goods from countries with which the U.S. runs a trade surplus also faced taxes.

Major trading partners impacted by Liberation Day tariffs include South Korea, Japan and the European Union — which combined export a range of products to the U.S., like electronics, cars and car parts and pharmaceuticals. Following trade talks, Trump's rates on most goods stood at 15 percent for the EU, Japan and South Korea ahead of Friday. But just last month, Trump threatened to hike levies on certain South Korean products to 25 percent — and countries worldwide still face sector-specific, non-IEEPA tariffs.

At the start of his second term, Trump used IEEPA to impose new tariffs on America's three biggest trading partners: Mexico, Canada and China.

Source: Korea Times News