Governor Newsom urges the Supreme Court to strike down Trump’s illegal tariffs

What you need to know: California today filed an amicus brief in the U.S. Supreme Court, opposing the Trump Administration's illegal and harmful tariffs and his fake emergency to try to justify them.

SACRAMENTO - Governor Gavin Newsom and Attorney General Rob Bonta today stood up for California families and the state's economy by filing an amicus brief urging the U.S Supreme Court to strike down President Trump's illegal tariffs. The President invoked an emergency law to impose tariffs without permission from Congress. But no emergency exists, the emergency law doesn't allow for tariffs anyway, and instead of helping the American economy, Trump's illegal tariffs have hurt families, farmers, and businesses by creating mass uncertainty and sending shockwaves through a previously healthy economy.

Trump's illegal tariffs are punishing American families and small businesses. It's not policy or business acumen - it's betrayal and grift. Americans are struggling to put food on their tables, and Trump's response is to send $20 billion in taxpayer money to Argentina and leave our farmers and ranchers out to dry. While Trump continues to play political games and make shady deals for his own benefit, California will keep fighting on your behalf. We urge the court to stand firm against authoritarianism and uphold the rule of law that they are sworn to protect.

Governor Gavin Newsom

The Trump Effect

California is the largest economy in the nation and the fourth-largest economy in the world. The Golden State is the largest importer of goods among the fifty states. Since February 2025, President Trump has issued an unprecedented and chaotic series of executive orders imposing tariffs ranging from 10% to 145% on nearly every trading partner of the United States. The illegal tariffs imposed by President Trump threaten to devastate California's economy, depriving it of $25 billion and more than 64,000 jobs.

Don't believe us? Hear it from President Ronald Reagan instead: "High tariffs inevitably lead to retaliation by foreign countries and the triggering of fierce trade wars. The result is more and more tariffs, higher and higher trade barriers, and less and less competition. So, soon, because of the prices made artificially high by tariffs that subsidize inefficiency and poor management, people stop buying. Then the worst happens: Markets shrink and collapse; businesses and industries shut down; and millions of people lose their jobs."

Standing up for Californians

Governor Newsom and Attorney General Bonta argue in the brief that President Trump does not have authority to impose tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), a statute enacted in 1977 that allows the President to take certain specified actions in response to a declared national emergency resulting from an unusual and extraordinary foreign threat. In the nearly fifty years since its enactment, no President has ever before invoked IEEPA to impose tariffs, because IEEPA does not reference the power to tax or tariff at all. Trump invoked this emergency law because the usual tariff laws that Congress has authorized would not allow for the kind of extreme, erratic tariffs Trump has imposed.

The case, Learning Resources v. Trump and Trump v. V.O.S. Selections, is scheduled for oral argument before the Supreme Court on Wednesday, November 5, 2025.

"President Trump's illegal tariffs impact businesses, consumers, and states across the nation - and they are illegal. Any attempt by the Trump Administration to interpret IEEPA as giving it the power to impose tariffs is a feat of mental gymnastics," said Attorney General Rob Bonta. "No matter how you spin it, no matter what definitions the Administration reaches for, 2 + 2 does not equal 10. Congress does not hide elephants in mouseholes - if Congress had intended to grant the President such extraordinary authority, it would have said so. Today, California asks the U.S. Supreme Court to rule that IEEPA does not authorize the President to impose tariffs."

Standing up for American families

On April 16, Governor Newsom and Attorney General Rob Bonta filed a lawsuit arguing that President Trump lacks the authority to unilaterally impose tariffs through the IEEPA, creating immediate and irreparable harm to California, the world's fourth-largest economy, and nation's leading manufacturing and agriculture state. California's case has been held in abeyance by the Ninth Circuit pending the Supreme Court's resolution of these cases. For more information on California's case, please see here.

Other states and entities nationwide have filed lawsuits of their own. Governor Newsom and Attorney General Bonta have filed an amicus brief in the Court of International Trade in Oregon v. Trump as well as in the D.C. Circuit in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump, cases challenging President Trump's illegal imposition of tariffs.