'Tariffs will replace income tax': Donald Trump defends trade deals after Supreme Court ruling

President Donald Trump on Tuesday claimed that most of the US' trading partners want to continue trade arrangements negotiated under his tariffs despite the recent ruling by the Supreme Court striking down many of them.

Speaking at the joint session of Congress during his 2026 State of the Union address, Trump also reiterated that tariff revenue could eventually replace income taxes. “Congressional action will not be necessary,” he said. “As time goes by, I believe the tariffs, paid for by foreign countries, will, like in the past, substantially replace the modern day system of income tax.”

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Slamming the ruling that struck down his sweeping tariffs, Trump said, “Just four days ago, an unfortunate ruling from the United States Supreme Court.

Very unfortunate ruling but the good news is that almost all countries and corporations want to keep the deal that they already made.”

“Knowing that the legal power that I, as President, have to make a latest deal could be far worse for them, and therefore, they will continue to work along the same successful path that we had negotiated before the Supreme Court's unfortunate involvement,” he added.

The high court’s decision, issued last week, found that Trump had exceeded his authority in imposing sweeping tariffs on imports.

Chief justice John Roberts and justices Amy Coney Barrett and Elena Kagan joined a 6–3 majority against several of the tariffs.

Soon after the ruling, Trump imposed a new 10-per cent duty under a different law, with the measure taking effect Tuesday. He has pledged to raise the rate to 15 percent and said the temporary tariffs, set to last 150 days unless extended by Congress, would lead to a stronger long-term solution.

“One of the primary reasons for our country's stunning economic turnaround, the biggest in history, where the Dow Jones broke 50,000 four years ahead of schedule and the S&P hit 7,000 where it wasn't supposed to do it for many years, were tariffs. I used these tariffs, took in hundreds of billions of dollars to make great deals for our country, both economically and on a national security basis. Everything was working well,” he said.

“Countries that were ripping us off for decades are now paying us hundreds of billions of dollars... And yet these countries are now happy, and so are we. We made deals. The deals are all done, and they're happy... There was no inflation, tremendous growth, and the large story was how Donald Trump called the economy correctly, and 22 Nobel Prize winners in economics didn't. They got it totally wrong. They got it really wrong,” said the US President.

However, a Novel York Federal Reserve paper released this month found that nearly 90 percent of the tariffs’ economic burden fell on US firms and consumers.

In 2026, the United States marks its 250th anniversary, commemorating the signing of the United States Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The milestone celebrates two and a half centuries since the thirteen American colonies declared independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain and launched a bold experiment in self-government.