Supreme Court hears IEEPA tariff arguments in V.O.S. Selections / Learning Resources

On 5 November 2025 the U.S. Supreme Court heard consolidated oral arguments in Trump v. V.O.S. Selections, Inc. (No. 25-250) and Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump (No. 24-1287); the Court allotted one hour of argument total across the consolidated cases.¹ Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued for the government; Neal K. Katyal argued for V.O.S. Selections and the small-business respondents; Pratik A. Shah argued for Learning Resources.² The Court is reviewing the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit’s en banc 7-4 ruling of 29 August 2025 (Lourie, J., for the court; Taranto, Moore, Prost and Chen, JJ., dissenting), which held that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act’s grant at 50 U.S.C. § 1702(a)(1)(B) to “regulate … importation … of … any property in which any foreign country or a national thereof has any interest” does not authorise the imposition of tariffs.³⁴ The Constitution vests the power to “lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises” in Congress under Article I, § 8, cl. 1; the foundational nondelegation precedent for tariff statutes is Field v. Clark, 143 U.S. 649 (1892), which upheld the Tariff Act of 1890 under the “intelligible principle” framework.⁵⁶ A decision is expected by the end of October Term 2025 in late June 2026.⁷

1. The Questions Presented frame three statutory-interpretation grounds: (i) whether IEEPA’s “regulate … importation” verb at 50 U.S.C. § 1702(a)(1)(B) encompasses tariffs; (ii) the nondelegation doctrine under Mistretta v. United States, 488 U.S. 361 (1989); and (iii) the major-questions doctrine articulated in West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency, 597 U.S. 697 (2022), and reinforced after Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, 603 U.S. 369 (2024) (overruling Chevron deference).⁸⁹¹⁰¹¹ Wire reports of the oral argument indicated questioning from Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett and Jackson on the “regulate” verb, with Justices Thomas, Alito and Sotomayor exploring the major-questions and nondelegation grounds.¹²

2. As of oral argument, U.S. Customs and Border Protection had collected IEEPA-attributable tariff receipts on the order of tens of billions of dollars under EOs 14193, 14194, 14195 (the 1 February 2025 fentanyl orders), 14257 (the 2 April 2025 reciprocal order), 14266, 14298, 14316, 14326, 14345 and 14346 — separate from § 232 and § 301 receipts — per CBP Monthly Trade and Travel reporting.¹³ An affirmance of the Federal Circuit’s holding would leave the declaratory ruling in place; importer refund procedures would proceed plaintiff-by-plaintiff under 19 U.S.C. § 1514 (protests against decisions of the Customs Service), 19 U.S.C. § 1520 (refunds and errors) and 19 U.S.C. § 1505(c) (interest on refunds), subject to the scope of any prospective equitable relief the Court grants and the universal-injunction constraints of Trump v. CASA, Inc., 145 S. Ct. 2540 (2025).¹⁴¹⁵

3. A ruling for the government would leave IEEPA tariff authority available as a parallel route alongside the constrained § 232 (19 U.S.C. § 1862, requiring a Commerce Department national-security investigation) and § 301 (19 U.S.C. § 2411, requiring a USTR investigation) tariff frameworks; future administrations could elect IEEPA to avoid those procedural requirements.¹⁶