President Trump signaled that he would ask Supreme Court as soon as Wednesday to overturn a ruling that found many of his punishing tariffs to be illegal, claiming that an erosion in his power to wage a global trade war would inflict severe financial damage on the United States.
Mr. Trump said the administration would also ask the justices to render an “expedited” decision, as he argued that the new legal uncertainty surrounding his tariffs had contributed to a recent drop in financial markets and could lead to “devastation for our country.”
“If you took away tariffs, we could end up being a third-world country,” Mr. Trump said at the White House.
The work to ready an appeal came as Mr. Trump resumed attacking a panel of appellate judges over their ruling, issued late Friday, that he had overstepped his authority by using a 1970s law to slap tariffs on nearly every major U.S. trading partner. But the court essentially left Mr. Trump’s sweeping tariffs in place until Oct. 14, in a move meant to allow the White House time to appeal the case to the Supreme Court.
“It’s a liberal court, and it’s going up to the Supreme Court,” Mr. Trump said, describing the decision as “very shocking.”
Mr. Trump has maintained that any erosion in his ability to impose levies using the International Emergency Economic Powers Act will inflict damage on the United States by robbing it of both revenue and leverage.
It remains unknown whether the Supreme Court would agree to hear the appeal and, if it did, how it might decide the case.
A loss at the Supreme Court related to the emergency powers would severely undercut Mr. Trump’s hand when it comes to imposing tariffs. It could also undermine the centerpiece of his economic strategy to force companies to invest in the United States.
While Mr. Trump has other tariff tools at his disposal, they are more limited than the emergency powers that he has invoked to impose levies of between 10 percent and 50 percent on countries across the globe. A loss at the Supreme Court could also force the administration to pay back billions of dollars in revenue that Mr. Trump has bragged about collecting so far this year with his new duties.
On Friday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled 7 to 4 against Mr. Trump and his use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, finding that it was unlikely that Congress had intended to grant the president nearly unlimited authority to impose tariffs as part of that law.
The statute, which primarily allows the president to impose sanctions, does not specifically mention tariffs. But Mr. Trump has invoked it repeatedly to issue withering global duties, most recently in an executive order imposing taxes on imports from about 90 countries in early August. Mr. Trump also used the law in the first months of his presidency to impose tariffs on China, Canada and Mexico, actions that he said were in response to those nations’ role in the fentanyl trade.
Angela M. Santos, a partner at the law firm ArentFox Schiff, said that the ruling was “great news for importers,” and might give them some hope that they could be refunded for the tariffs they had already paid to the government. However, she added, “this dispute is far from over, the decision might be limited in scope, and importers may not see relief for some time.”
The adverse ruling on Friday was the second such legal defeat for the administration. In May, a lower trade court similarly found that Mr. Trump did not have “unbounded authority” under the 1970s law known as IEEPA, a decision that the administration appealed.
Even before the ruling, the administration had said it would appeal a loss to the Supreme Court. Mr. Trump and his advisers appeared to confirm those intentions in initial statements lashing out against the judiciary.
Mr. Trump late on Friday attacked the appeals court on social media as “Highly Partisan,” and said he sought to preserve his tariffs with the “help of the United States Supreme Court.”
On Sunday, the president said that trillions of dollars of announced investment in the United States would be at risk if the tariffs were overruled.
“If a Radical Left Court is allowed to terminate these Tariffs, almost all of this investment, and much more, will be immediately canceled!” he wrote. “In many ways, we would become a Third World Nation, with no hope of GREATNESS again.”
Peter Navarro, a trade adviser to the president, on Sunday described the decision as “weaponized partisan injustice at its worst.” Mr. Navarro, speaking on Fox News, asserted that a loss at the Supreme Court would be the “end of the United States.”
Trade experts have said that a loss at the Supreme Court could force the U.S. government to pay back some of the billions of dollars it has collected in tariffs, creating a significant burden for the United States and more uncertainty for companies struggling to keep up with changing trade terms.
Mr. Trump’s top aides have said that a loss could also lead to a diplomatic embarrassment. In statements published hours before the ruling, Mr. Trump’s advisers raised particular concern about the trade deals the president had brokered with the European Union and other nations. Those agreements are based on tariffs imposed under the emergency powers act.
Howard Lutnick, the secretary of commerce, said that a ruling against the administration could “lead to retaliation and the unwinding of agreed-upon deals by foreign-trading partners, and derail critical ongoing negotiations with foreign-trading partners.”
Some of America’s largest trading partners have indicated that they will not be beholden to what the United States decides.
“Tearing up a deal because of a U.S. court ruling would be rubbing salt in Trump’s wound and risk triggering backlash, and not just on trade,” Mujtaba Rahman, who leads European research for the political risk consultancy Eurasia Group, said in an email. He said that European leaders would probably look to leverage the deal by saying, “‘Look we’ll stick with the deal but you too implement it, and no monkey business with digital regulations and taxes.’”
Carsten Brzeski at ING in Germany, said that U.S. court decisions had too often “been challenged or overruled.” “The E.U. will be very cautious in reacting to it; at least in public,” he said.
Mr. Trump does have other powers at his disposal, but each comes with drawbacks. Statutes such as Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 typically require consultations and investigations that can take several months to carry out. That would prevent the president from arbitrarily raising and lowering tariffs.
Mr. Trump has repeatedly used Section 232 to impose tariffs on specific products on national security grounds, including foreign steel and automobiles. Those duties were unaffected by the court ruling on Friday. The president is exploring taxes on imported pharmaceuticals, semiconductors and other products under the Section 232 authority.
Other trade laws allow the president to issue sweeping tariffs, but only for a limited period of time. Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, for example, allows a president to impose duties of up to 15 percent globally for up to 150 days. Another provision of that law, Section 301, allows the president to issue broad tariffs in response to unfair trading practices, after first carrying out consultations and an investigation.
Jeanna Smialek and Lydia DePillis contributed reporting.
Tony Romm is a reporter covering economic policy and the Trump administration for The Times, based in Washington.
Ana Swanson covers trade and international economics for The Times and is based in Washington. She has been a journalist for more than a decade.
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