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Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast for Friday, February 20th, 2026.

I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House.

I'm Danielle Kurtzleben. I also cover the White House.

And I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover politics.

Today on the show, President Trump's signature economic policy, tariffs on imported goods,

has been struck down by the Supreme Court.

In a 6-3 ruling, the court said the president did not have the authority to impose tariffs

unilaterally as he had long claimed. Danielle, let us start there. How had the president

tried to impose tariffs?

Well, in the case that we're talking about here, we're talking about a law called AEPA.

And you're going to hear us say AEPA a million times today.

AEPA stands for the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.

It's an act from the 1970s that the Trump administration said allowed him to impose just sweeping tariffs on goods from all over the world.

The only thing was that he had to declare an emergency first.

So those tariffs can only be used in case of emergency, he said.

And so he imposed them to deal with what he said were two emergencies.

One is a large trade deficit with many countries, and the other is fentanyl. So he said, look, the fentanyl trade and also our trade deficits so big, we're going to

use these tariffs to try to cover those. Now, one important point, that covers just the tariffs that are on particular countries.

So if Trump said we are imposing tariffs on goods from China, Canada, Mexico, those are IEPA tariffs.

And we can just remind everyone that he had a big ceremony in the Rose Garden with giant poster boards with numbers on them saying the tariffs that

he was going to impose on dozens of countries. That was back in the spring. Yeah, April 2nd of last

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