'So it's a loss then?': Moment Donald Trump learnt of Supreme Court's tariff blow mid-meeting

US President Donald Trump was midway through a closed-door White House meeting with governors when news arrived that the Supreme Court had struck down his global tariff policy.

He was handed a note by a trade adviser informing him of the ruling.




“So it’s a loss, then?” Trump asked the adviser, according to people in the room. He then told the governors gathered in the White House State Dining Room that while he appeared calm, he was seething inside, and described the ruling as a “disgrace,” the people said, as cited by the Wall Street Journal.

Soon after learning of the Supreme Court’s decision, Trump cut short a question-and-answer session with governors and left the room, saying he needed to focus on preparing his response to the ruling.

The ruling is likely to have broad consequences, potentially requiring the White House to develop a new legal justification for the US president’s tariffs.

Trump and his advisers had anticipated such an outcome, and some senior officials had long believed the administration would lose the case, according to people familiar with the discussions, the Wall Street Journal reports.

“I’ve been waiting forever, forever,” Trump said during a speech in Georgia on Thursday, expressing frustration over the time taken by the Supreme Court to rule on the case. “And the language is clear that I have the right to do it as president.”

In recent months, Trump had warned that the court’s decision was a matter of “life or death,” saying a move to overturn the tariffs would trigger an economic disaster.

In its 6–3 decision on Friday, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, the Supreme Court ruled against Trump’s tariffs despite its conservative majority.

The ruling did not break along ideological lines: Roberts and conservative justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett, both appointed by Trump during his first term, joined the court’s three liberal justices to strike down the policy, while the three remaining conservative justices dissented.

Trump criticised the ruling in personal terms, directing particular criticism at Republican-appointed justices, including those he nominated, calling them “fools” and “lapdogs” for Democrats.

“They’re very unpatriotic and disloyal to our Constitution,” Trump told reporters, adding, “It’s my opinion that the court has been swayed by foreign interests.”

The decision is the first instance in Trump’s second term in which the Supreme Court has decisively overturned one of his policies, after earlier giving the administration considerable leeway.