Liberation Day: One Year Later, Tariffs Struck Down by Supreme Court as Manufacturing Sheds 89,000 Jobs

One year after President Trump declared April 2 "Liberation Day" and unveiled sweeping import tariffs on nearly every country in the world, the economic ledger is deeply contested: the Supreme Court struck down most of the duties as illegal, manufacturing employment has fallen by 89,000 jobs, and Trump marked the anniversary by signing executive orders imposing fresh tariffs on pharmaceuticals and metals. The picture is one of a major policy initiative that transformed global trade, triggered a stock market crash, and survived in only partial form — yet whose architect remains committed to expanding it.

The original package, announced via executive order on April 2, 2025, imposed a baseline 10 percent tariff on all imports and higher rates — reaching 100 percent or more — on goods from major trading partners including China, the European Union, and Canada. Markets reacted with the largest single-day decline since the COVID-19 crash of 2020. On February 20, 2026, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act — the legal authority Trump invoked — does not authorize the imposition of tariffs, invalidating the broadest portion of the package. Trump called the ruling "a disgrace" and signed new Section 232 tariffs on steel, aluminum, and, on the one-year anniversary, prescription drugs.

For manufacturers, the outcome has been unambiguously painful. U.S. factories employed 89,000 fewer workers in February 2026 than they did in April 2025 when the tariffs took effect, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data, despite Trump's repeated promises of a domestic manufacturing renaissance. The United States goods trade deficit hit an all-time high in 2025, the opposite of the intended effect. At the same time, government tariff revenue in the first five months of the current fiscal year reached $151 billion — nearly four times the comparable period in previous years — providing a windfall that the administration has pointed to as evidence of policy success even as economists argued the costs were being passed to American consumers.

The Tax Foundation estimated that the tariffs amount to the largest US tax increase as a share of GDP since 1993, translating to an average annual burden of $1,500 per household. Sixty-five percent of Americans in a CNN poll conducted in April 2026 said they believe Trump's economic policies are hurting the economy, and his overall approval rating has dropped to 35 percent. On global equity markets, the United States lagged behind: since Liberation Day, the Shanghai Composite, South Korea's Kospi, and Japan's Nikkei 225 have all delivered greater total returns than the three major Wall Street indexes, with emerging markets significantly outperforming U.S. equities.

The one-year anniversary itself produced new policy rather than reflection: Trump signed executive orders adjusting steel and aluminum duties and imposing tariffs of up to 100 percent on name-brand pharmaceuticals, arguing that foreign manufacturers had for too long underpaid for drugs covered by U.S. research spending. Democratic senators, led by Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, introduced legislation to strip the remaining tariff authority and deliver refunds to American importers who overpaid. Industry groups warned that the pharmaceutical tariffs could raise drug prices for patients and push supply chains further offshore — a repeat, critics said, of exactly what happened in steel and aluminum in 2025.