Republicans were pleased when President Donald Trump spoke during the State of the Union address Tuesday about his plan to continue imposing global tariffs after the Supreme Court dealt him a setback, according to live reactions from a panel of voters.
The panel, assembled by polling group Maslansky & Partners and made up of 29 Democrats, 30 independents and 41 Republicans, gave real-time reactions as Trump spoke. The responses were displayed on a line graph, with higher values indicating positive reactions and lower values indicating negative reactions.
Trump called the Supreme Court’s decision striking down the tariffs “unfortunate” as four justices sat stone-faced in the front row of the House chamber.
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It is customary for justices to be invited to the address, though not all typically attend. Chief Justice John Roberts and justices Elena Kagan, Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh attended Tuesday.
Trump touted the tariffs, which he unilaterally imposed last year under an emergency law, as a key negotiating tool, saying they helped him broker peace deals between other countries and generated billions of dollars in revenue. The Supreme Court found that Trump illegally bypassed Congress by invoking the law, known as the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.
But “just four days ago, an unfortunate ruling from the United States Supreme Court, it just came down, a very unfortunate ruling,” Trump said, as the dials on the line graph showed Republicans reacting approvingly and Democrats and independents responding negatively.
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“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 new 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,” Trump said.
Trump said he had “time-tested” alternatives to the IEEPA that he planned to use so he could again sidestep Congress’ role in authorizing tariffs, which the Supreme Court said functioned like a tax and therefore required congressional approval under the Constitution.