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This story was produced by the Oregon Journalism Project, a nonprofit newsroom covering the state.
Since he took office in January 2025, Attorney General Dan Rayfield has signed Oregon on to dozens of lawsuits against President Donald J. Trump’s administration. Today, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Oregon’s favor in one of the most closely watched and consequential of those cases.
On Feb. 20, the court ruled against the president in a case that alleged he’d exceeded his authority when he unilaterally imposed a wide-ranging series of tariffs— taxes on imported goods—on U.S. trading partners.
“Today, the Supreme Court made it clear that no president gets to levy taxes on Americans disguised as tariffs,” Rayfield said in a statement.
“At a time when we should all be working together to do everything in our power to keep the cost of living down for working families, the president tried to sidestep Congress to increase prices on groceries, utilities, and basic everyday necessities.”
The Supreme Court justices, led by Chief Justice John Roberts, voted 6–3 in Oregon’s favor. In the case Oregon v. Trump, Oregon deputy attorney general Benjamin Gutman told the court in November 2025 oral arguments that Trump had improperly claimed for himself an authority that legally belongs to Congress. The state specifically challenged four executive orders Trump issued imposing tariffs.
In his second term as president, which began in January 2025, Trump has made tariffs a key part of his economic and foreign policy. He has said—erroneously, in the opinions of many leading economists—that by taxing imports, he would encourage the rebirth of American manufacturing and punish trading partners for undercutting U.S. goods. Trump also claimed that U.S. trading partners, such as China, would bear the cost of the tariffs.
Importers who bring in foreign products pay the Trump-imposed tariffs to the U.S. government, but exactly who absorbs the cost of those import taxes has been feverishly debated. Trump claims exporters bear the cost, with the revenue flooding into the U.S. Treasury as almost free money. Many economists disagree with that explanation, saying the importers pass along the costs to Americans who are the end users of the imported goods.
A research paper by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York released earlier this month found that indeed U.S. consumers, rather than foreign trading partners, bore almost the entire brunt: “In sum, U.S. firms and consumers continue to bear the bulk of the economic burden of the high tariffs imposed in 2025,” the report said.
Importers who paid the tariffs, totaling more than $150 billion so far, are lining up to sue the federal government to seek refunds of their payments.
As a coastal state with large manufacturing and agricultural sectors, Oregon is “heavily dependent” on foreign trade, according to Business Oregon, the state’s economic development agency. That means the top court’s decision should benefit Oregon companies, along with Oregon consumers.
