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This is a crucial moment for the Constitution’s separation of powers. A 7-4 majority upheld a lower-court decision striking down the tariffs that Trump imposed under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). In February he invoked the law to slap taxes on imports from Mexico, Canada and China, supposedly to address a fentanyl emergency. He later declared the U.S. trade deficit an emergency to justify tariffs on the rest of the world.

IEEPA gives a president authority to “regulate” the “importation” of goods to protect national security. Trump claims this lets him impose tariffs, as long as he declares a national emergency.

The judges disagree. “IEEPA does not use the words ‘tariffs’ or ‘duties,’ nor any similar terms like ‘customs,’ ‘taxes,’ or ‘imposts,’” the unsigned majority opinion says. This is unlike every other law in which Congress explicitly gives the president tariff power. Those laws have “used clear and precise terms to delegate tariff power, reciting the term ‘duties’ or one of its synonyms,” the judges say.

The administration and the four dissenting judges claim the term “regulate” should be interpreted broadly. But tariffs are taxes, and the majority says that “the power to ‘regulate’ has long been understood to be distinct from the power to ‘tax.’” The administration’s argument would let the Securities and Exchange Commission “tax substantial swaths of the American economy” because Congress authorized it to regulate stock trading.

More ominously for Trump, his tariffs run afoul of the Supreme Court’s major questions doctrine, which says that presidents need clear authority from Congress for significant economic and political actions. The court applied the doctrine in overturning President Joe Biden’s $400 billion student-loan forgiveness. Trump’s tariffs certainly qualify as major, since they hit more than $4 trillion of imports annually and some 14% of the nation’s economy.

“Where the government has ‘never previously claimed powers of this magnitude,’ the major questions doctrine may be implicated,” the majority says. Mr. Trump is the first president to use IEEPA to impose tariffs, which is “a ‘telling indication’ that the government’s reading of a statute is incorrect.”

Trump’s lawyers try to dodge the major questions barrier by saying this is trumped on foreign policy by the president’s Article II powers. While judges typically defer to presidents on foreign matters, as the majority says, “the power of the purse (including the power to tax) belongs to Congress.” Same for trade, as the Constitution makes clear.

If Trump gets away with his IEEPA tariffs, what’s to stop the next president from using the law to put tariffs on countries with high CO2 emissions? It isn’t hard to imagine a Democrat in the White House declaring a global climate “emergency” and arguing that because this counts as “foreign policy,” judges should give a pass.

Trump denounced the decision and blamed partisan judges, but judges nominated by presidents of both parties were on opposite sides of the ruling. The court also left the tariffs in place for now and told the lower court to reconsider its universal injunction under the terms the Supreme Court recently laid out Trump v. CASA. But on a policy as consequential as these tariffs, the ruling can’t merely apply to the plaintiffs in this case alone.

Trump is bloody-minded on tariffs, and he will use whatever other statutes he can. He recently expanded his use of Section 232 national-security power to impose tariffs on “derivative” steel and aluminum products, including bulldozers, furniture, railcars, appliances, air-conditioning parts, butter knives, spray deodorants and strollers. Who knew that baby buggies were a threat to the homeland?