CALIFORNIA ATTORNEY GENERAL Rob Bonta clearly enjoyed an opportunity last week to say “I told you so” after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump.
California was the first state to challenge the Trump administration in a lawsuit filed April 16, 2025, arguing that Trump was not authorized under the International Economic Emergency Powers Act to impose the sweeping tariffs he put into place in the spring of 2025.
The high court’s 6-3 ruling found that while the act gives a president power in the case of a national emergency to take a wide range of actions without advance approval from Congress, those actions do not include the power to impose tariffs.
Tariffs fall under the taxing power, clearly allocated to Congress by the U.S. Constitution, and while Congress may, and at times has, delegated the power to the president to impose particular tariffs, the act was not one of those situations, according to the court.
Speaking at a press conference Friday in San Francisco, Bonta said that nothing in the court’s opinion surprised him. While it was not California’s lawsuit that was before the court, Bonta was in the courtroom when the case was argued.
He said, “It came down exactly the way I thought, 6-3 with the exact justices aligned in the exact way I thought.”
Bonta characterized the tariffs as the “centerpiece” of Trump’s domestic and foreign policymaking.
Clearly enjoying himself, Bonta borrowed Trump’s hyperbole to say that for Trump, it was the “the most important policy in the history of the United States of America and maybe the world.”
California, Bonta emphasized, had a huge stake in the tariff issue because it is the nation’s largest importer and the second-largest exporter. He said that when the tariffs were imposed, the state projected that California’s losses would be more than $25 billion and job losses would be excess of 60,000.
He said in the time the tariffs have been in effect, “some businesses shuttered their doors because of these tariffs and will not reopen. Some of the damage is irreparable.”
He said that for businesses, the tariffs were painful, particularly because of “the loss of jobs, the inability to plan, to expand, to invest capital because of the uncertainty in their future.”
He added, “Businesses need certainty. As a former businessman, [Trump] should know that.”
Bonta said that his office remains steadfast in its commitment to bring lawsuits against the Trump administration when it does something illegal that hurts Californians. To date, his office has filed 58 suits against the federal government.
Bonta declared the outcome “a tremendous win for California and Californians, for America and Americans.”
Next battle: refunds
While the legality of the tariffs is now a settled matter, a looming question is what happens to the tariffs that have been paid. The majority opinion did not directly address refunds. In his dissent, Justice Brett Kavanaugh suggested that the refund issue would be “a mess.”
According to Bonta, many refund claims are currently pending in the U.S. Court of International Trade and that is the forum where claims will be determined.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday called on the Trump administration to issue refunds immediately.
Meanwhile, U.S. Rep. Mike Thompson, D-Napa, introduced Friday an Illegal Tariff Refund Act that would create “individual tariff refund credits” that would flow back through the Treasury Department to individual consumers.
The bill highlights an issue that is sure to get greater focus in the days ahead, that is, how should refunds be allocated between the importing corporation and its customers, in cases where the importer has directly or indirectly passed some or all of the tariff along to the consumer.
Bonta closed Friday’s press conference by saying that he has faith in the high court and is looking forward to its rulings in two other important cases, “the unlawful removal of Lisa Cook from the Federal Reserve, [and] the ongoing durability of the Constitutional right to birthright citizenship.”
Bonta said the tariff decision was a “humiliating loss for Trump in front of the U.S. Supreme Court.” He clearly hopes those cases will turn out the same.
