President Trump took to Truth Social on Saturday morning to crown a new favorite on the Supreme Court. After the Court ruled 6-3 on Friday to block his tariff authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, Trump singled out Justice Brett Kavanaugh for his forceful dissent.

"My new hero is United States Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and, of course, Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito."

Trump added that there was no doubt in anyone's mind that the three dissenting justices want to "MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN." As reported by the NY Post, he had already praised Kavanaugh during a Friday speech, citing "his genius and his great ability" and saying he was "very proud of that appointment."

The praise was well earned. Kavanaugh didn't just dissent. He dismantled the majority's reasoning in terms so plain they bordered on mockery.

Kavanaugh's dissent exposes the majority's logic problem

Kavanaugh called the Court's decision "illogical," and the word choice was precise. His core argument was simple: under the majority's interpretation of IEEPA, the president could block all imports from China entirely but could not impose even a one-dollar tariff on goods imported from China.

"That approach does not make much sense."

That is the kind of line that tends to age well. The majority's reading creates a bizarre hierarchy of executive power in which total economic warfare (embargoes, quotas, full import bans) is permissible but a modest tariff is not. Kavanaugh argued that IEEPA "does not draw such an odd distinction between quotas and embargoes on the one hand and tariffs on the other," but instead empowers the president to regulate imports during national emergencies using all three tools.

It's worth sitting with the absurdity that the majority carved into law. The president of the United States can, under this ruling, completely sever trade with a foreign nation overnight. He just can't charge that nation's exporters a fee at the border. The blunt instrument is legal. The precise one is not.

The practical fallout could be enormous

Kavanaugh didn't stop at the constitutional argument. He warned that the Court's decision carries real, immediate consequences that the majority apparently did not weigh seriously enough. In his dissent, he noted that the ruling could force the government to refund billions of dollars to importers who already paid IEEPA tariffs.

"The United States may be required to refund billions of dollars to importers who paid the IEEPA tariffs, even though some importers may have already passed on costs to consumers or others."

Think about what that means in practice:

• Importers collected higher prices from American consumers.
• Those costs have already been absorbed throughout the supply chain.
• The government may now have to write refund checks to the importers, not to the consumers who actually paid.

Kavanaugh acknowledged at oral argument that the refund process would likely be a "mess." He also warned the decision could "generate uncertainty" and affect "numerous other federal statutes" that grant the executive branch similar emergency authorities. The ripple effects extend well beyond tariffs.

Trump pivots without missing a beat

Whatever one thinks of the Court's ruling, the administration's response was immediate and methodical. Within hours of Friday's decision, Trump announced a 10% global tariff. By Saturday, he raised it to 15%, this time citing Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 as his legal authority.

The move is telling. The administration had clearly war-gamed the possibility of losing at the Supreme Court and had an alternative statutory footing ready to deploy. The shift from IEEPA to the Trade Act of 1974 signals that the tariff agenda is not contingent on any single legal theory. The tools change. The direction does not.

Trump had originally bypassed Congress last year and levied tariffs on nearly every country in the world under IEEPA, arguing that an influx of illicit drugs from China, Mexico, and Canada, along with a trade deficit that has decimated American manufacturing, constituted emergencies justifying the action. The substance of that argument remains untouched by Friday's ruling. The Court said he used the wrong key, not that the door shouldn't be opened.

The bigger picture for executive trade authority

Even Kavanaugh conceded that the ruling may not "substantially constrain" a president's ability to order tariffs going forward. That's a significant admission buried inside a dissent, and it suggests the majority may have won a battle while losing the war. If the president can reach the same destination through the Trade Act of 1974 or other existing statutes, the practical effect of this ruling narrows considerably.

What it does accomplish is creating legal uncertainty at precisely the moment the administration is negotiating trade deals reportedly worth trillions of dollars. Foreign governments now have an incentive to delay, to litigate, to wait for the next ruling. Courts may not intend to conduct foreign economic policy, but that is the effect when they inject instability into presidential trade authority during active negotiations.

Kavanaugh understood this. His dissent wasn't just about statutory interpretation. It was about the real-world consequences of judicial decisions that sound clean in chambers but land messy in global markets.

Three justices stood firm

Kavanaugh, Thomas, and Alito voted together in dissent. Three justices who read IEEPA as it was written: a broad grant of emergency economic authority that includes tariffs alongside embargoes and quotas. Not a statute that hands the president a full arsenal and then removes the one weapon calibrated for precision.

Trump recognized them for it. In a political environment where even allies hedge and equivocate, that recognition carries weight.

The tariffs are still going up. The legal authority has shifted. The trade agenda continues. Friday's ruling changed the vehicle, not the destination.