Hunton Retail Law Resource

On February 20, 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act ("IEEPA") does not authorize the President to impose tariffs. In Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump, the Court invalidated tariffs imposed under IEEPA in connection with the Administration’s drug‑trafficking and "reciprocal" trade actions. The Supreme Court concluded that IEEPA’s grant of authority to "regulate … importation" does not include the power to impose tariffs. Tariffs are taxes, and the Constitution assigns taxing authority to Congress. When Congress intends to delegate tariff authority, it does so explicitly and with defined limits—features absent from IEEPA.

The federal government has long maintained a preference for selecting commercial products and services in the federal procurement space.  This preference has been the case since at least the time President Clinton signed the Federal Acquisition Streamlining Act of 1994 (FASA) into law, and has been reiterated by Congress since then, including in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Years 2016 and 2017, for example, and the preference is enshrined in Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) Part 12.

On August 6, 2020, President Trump signed executive orders imposing new economic sanctions under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (50 U.S.C. § 1701 et seq.) and the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. § 1601 et seq.) against TikTok, a video-sharing mobile application, and WeChat, a messaging, social media and mobile payments application. The orders potentially affect tens of millions of U.S. users of these applications and billions of users worldwide.

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