This TaxProf Op-Ed on Learning Resources is by Susan C. Morse (Texas; Google Scholar), Shu-Yi Oei (Duke; Google Scholar) & Diane M. Ring (Boston College; Google Scholar):

Learning Resources Is a Statutory Interpretation Decision—And That’s a Good Thing

Susan C. Morse, Shu-Yi Oei & Diane M. Ring

Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump, the Supreme Court case that struck down tariffs imposed by President Trump, offers opinions written by seven of the nine Justices, including the Court’s opinion written by Chief Justice John Roberts. But the Court’s holding and explanation are relatively short, contained in fewer than ten of 170 total pages released by the Court. These provide a statutory interpretation decision that stands on its own, despite the major questions doctrine (MQD) crossfire that consumes most of Learning Resources’ ink.

The decision written by Chief Justice John Roberts for the Court has an alternating structure. Parts II.A.1 and II.B cover statutory interpretation, and are joined by Justices Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett, Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, thus providing the 6-3 majority for the Court’s decision. Parts II.A.2 and III cover the major questions doctrine, and are joined only by Justices Gorsuch and Barrett. As Professor Jon Endean has pointed out, “the Court as a whole stopped short of imposing a ‘clear statement’ rule on delegations of the taxing power.”

The Court’s statutory interpretation opinion starts with Part II.A.1’s statement that the power to tariff, at least in peacetime, is an Article I taxing power that belongs to Congress in the first instance. This is a consensus point, conceded by the Government at oral argument. Professor Conor Clarke emphasizes that Justice Gorsuch endorses it. Even the principal dissent, authored by Justice Brett Kavanaugh and joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, agrees that the taxing power, including the power to tariff, starts with Congress. Justice Clarence Thomas’s dissent, though, argues that the power to tariff is an external affairs power that was not historically legislative.

Part II.B offers the Court’s statutory interpretation analysis and explains why the authority to “regulate” “importation” under the International Economic Emergency Powers Act, or IEEPA, does not authorize the President’s sweeping tariffs. The Court makes the following points: The nine verbs in IEEPA do not include “tariff” or any synonym or substitute. “Regulate” does not authorize taxation, even though, as Professor Reuven Avi-Yonah emphasizes, taxation may sometimes have a regulatory effect. Moreover, as used in IEEPA, “regulate” cannot authorize taxation; if it did, it would unconstitutionally authorize the taxation of “exportation,” too. IEEPA’s authority to “compel” and “prohibit” is not a greater power that must encompass “tax”; rather, taxes are different, because unlike quotas or embargos, they “raise revenue for the Treasury.” There is not enough evidence that Congress meant to endorse and expand the 1975 decision in United States v. Yoshida Int’l, Inc., where the Court of Customs and Patent Appeals held that a predecessor statute with similar language, the Trading with the Enemy Act, authorized President Nixon’s imposition of a five-month-long 10% across-the-board tariff. The unanimous 1976 Supreme Court decision confirming Presidential tariff authority in Federal Energy Administration v. Algonquin SNG, Inc. interpreted Section 232(b), a different trade statute with broader language.

In conclusion, the Court held that “the terms of IEEPA do not authorize tariffs.” Learning Resources is about identifying tax delegations. IEEPA isn’t one.

As we have argued elsewhere, statutory interpretation is the judicious choice. It is the narrowest ground upon which the Court could have decided the case. The best reading of Learning Resources is that it holds that IEEPA did not authorize tariffs, full stop, without any need to resort to the MQD or to consider the constitutional issue of nondelegation.

Some comments suggest that the Court “held [that the] MQD applies.” Our interpretation, though, is that the Court did not so hold, at least not clearly. The government and the principal dissent argued that the MQD did not apply because the tariffs relate to Article II foreign affairs powers. The Court rejected that argument, and thus held that the MQD did not not apply. Justice Gorsuch’s concurrence states that the “principal opinion[] appli[es]” the major questions doctrine, but this is surely an oversimplification. Roberts’ opinion for the Court applies the MQD in the sense that it discusses the MQD. But the Court’s opinion does not actually require the MQD to reach its decision, and only three Justices signed on to the parts of the decision discussing the MQD. Perhaps the MQD is an inherent part of the Roberts analysis under Justice Barrett’s theory that the MQD is an “ordinary interpretation of textualism,” but Roberts does not say so, and Justice Barrett’s theory keeps the analysis within the lines of statutory interpretation in any case.

In order for the government to win Learning Resources, it had to win the ordinary statutory interpretation point and persuade the Court that IEEPA authorized the President to impose the tariffs at issue. The government also had to win the major questions doctrine point by arguing that the statute was sufficiently clear given the importance of the tariff issue and/or by arguing that the MQD did not apply because the President was exercising Article II-adjacent powers. Thus, the principal dissent felt compelled to both raise and reject the MQD. This opened a can of worms and prompted the other Justices to respond, even though the MQD was not dispositive. As the “splintered” MQD opinions show, the Justices’ views on this point are a conflicted mess.

IEEPA is not a tax statute, but there are quite a few statutes that do authorize the President to impose tariffs. Next up: the President’s use of those statutes to replace some of the tariffs invalidated in Learning Resources. A February 20 Executive Order re-imposes an across-the-board 10% tariff, and that might increase to 15% soon. The stated authority is Section 122, a 1974 statute designed to remedy balance-of-payment issues that could have arisen when the value of the dollar was tied to the value of gold.

Coming soon: another round of tariff legality litigation in which payers of new Section 122 tariffs ask the Court of International Trade—whose exclusive tariff jurisdiction Learning Resources confirmed—to enjoin them. And in these forthcoming cases, the MQD could be dispositive. Does the 150-day tariff imposed under the balance-of-payments statute illegally “hide elephants in mouseholes”? And in deciding that question, should the MQD be treated as part of statutory interpretation, or as a separate doctrine? Time will tell. But time has not yet told so far.

Other TaxProf Blog Op-Eds in this series:

• TaxProf Op-Ed: Appleby on the State Tax Implications of Learning Resources (Feb. 26, 2026)
• TaxProf Op-Ed: Clarke on Justice Gorsuch’s Learning Resources Concurrence (Feb. 25, 2026)
• TaxProf Op-Ed: Endean on Delegations of the Taxing Power (Feb. 24, 2026)
• TaxProf Op-Ed: Avi-Yonah on Learning Resources and Regulatory Taxation (Feb. 23, 2026)
• The Supreme Court Strikes Down Trump’s IEEPA Tariffs (Feb. 21, 2026)