President Donald Trump held a press conference on Friday to discuss his administration’s surprise defeat at the U.S. Supreme Court on tariffs. To sum it up, Trump is angry at the Supreme Court justices he installed during his first term, who nonetheless voted against him. And he’s going to impose his tariffs anyway, just using different mechanisms than he tried before.
“Foreign countries that have been ripping us off for years are ecstatic. They’re so happy. And they’re dancing in the streets, but they won’t be dancing for long. That I can assure you,” Trump said angrily to open his press conference on Friday.
The Supreme Court struck down tariffs imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, but Trump insisted Friday that he could use other tariff statutes to essentially get the same outcome.
“In order to protect our country, a president can actually charge more tariffs than I was charging in the past period of a year under the various tariffs authorities,” Trump insisted.
The overall average effective tariff rate went from about 2% under President Joe Biden to about 16.9% before today’s ruling, according to Yale’s Budget Lab. If the Supreme Court’s ruling were followed without adding more tariffs, the nonpartisan group estimates a tariff rate of 9.1%, still the highest since 1946.
With the newly threatened 10% global tariff added, Budget Lab estimates that will bring the overall tariff rate to about 15.4%, according to the New York Times. And it seems like Trump intends to do just that.
“Effective immediately, all national security tariffs under Section 232 and existing Section 301 tariffs… remain in place, fully in place, and in full force and effect. Today I will sign an order to impose a 10% global tariff under Section 122, over and above our normal tariffs already being charged,” said Trump.
Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 authorizes the president to impose tariffs under the pretense of national security concerns. Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 allows the president to impose tariffs on countries engaged in supposedly unfair trade practices. And Section 122 of the 1974 trade legislation is supposed to be a temporary action to address trade imbalances for up to 150 days with tariffs up to 15%.
The president continued his press conference by saying that he’s initiating other investigations “to protect our country from unfair trading practices of other countries and companies.”
“Effective immediately, all National Security TARIFFS, Section 232 and existing Section 301 TARIFFS, remain in place, and in full force and effect. Today I will sign an Order to impose a 10% GLOBAL TARIFF, under Section 122, over and above our normal TARIFFS already being… pic.twitter.com/B3bv5f5KW1
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) February 20, 2026
Trump appeared to be reading from a statement that was sent out on Truth Social shortly after he delivered it, even reading aloud his “thank you for your attention to this matter,” a staple of his posts on the social media platform in his second term.
The ruling Friday was 6-3, with Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, and Brett Kavanaugh in the minority. Only Kavanaugh was appointed by Trump in his first term. Trump was asked about the conservative Supreme Court justices who ruled against him, including Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett, and said the ruling was “an embarrassment to their families.”
Trump also said that the Supreme Court “has been swayed by foreign interests and a political movement that is far smaller than people would ever think.” Trump has lashed out at the Federalist Society’s Leonard Leo, a major figure in the conservative movement who has opposed the president’s tariffs and funded lawsuits against them. As for the “foreign interests,” Trump didn’t clarify what he meant by that, but simply replied, “You’re going to find out” when asked if he was going to investigate members of the court.
Trump’s press conference frequently went into absolutely bizarre territory, as often happens under this president. At one point, Trump said he wanted to “be a good boy” by not doing anything that would “affect the decision of the court.” Trump seemed to suggest that he would no longer hold back in his attacks on the court, something he obviously never did in the first place.
The president also made false claims about how the tariffs were used to influence foreign relations.
“Tariffs have been used to end five of the eight wars I’ve settled,” Trump insisted, even though that’s not remotely true. “I’ve settled eight wars, whether you like it or not. Big ones. Nuclear. Could’ve been nuclear. The Prime Minister of Pakistan said yesterday that President Trump could’ve saved 35 million lives.”
Fielding questions from reporters on Friday, Trump said that his new tariffs will be “potentially higher” than anything he had implemented before the ruling. Trump has previously said that he wants the tariffs to eventually replace federal income taxes. And while that seems unlikely to happen anytime soon, abolishing income tax has indeed been a goal of conservatives for generations.
Trump was flanked by his Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who’s most notably under fire recently for revelations that he visited Jeffrey Epstein’s island. Lutnick denies wrongdoing, but there’s been a chorus of calls for his firing.
The consensus from financial experts seems to be that it’s difficult to predict what any of this new chaos will do to the economy. They also seem to agree that companies are unlikely to lower prices absent new tariffs, even if Trump were to take considerable time to impose the tariffs through alternate means.
“The only certainty is uncertainty,” Bloomberg reporter Jordan Fitzgerald said during a Q&A discussion after the press conference.
It’s hard to sum up the Trump era better than that. Just ask Iran, as the biggest U.S. military buildup in the Middle East since 2003 is currently happening.
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