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Maxine Kelly and Philip Georgiadis in London and Peter Wells and Zehra Munir in New York

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FT Reporters

US Supreme Court delivers ruling on Trump’s tariffs

The US Supreme Court has started delivering its ruling on the legality of Donald Trump’s sweeping tariff regime.

America’s top court has been examining whether the US administration exceeded its authority in using the International Emergency Powers Act to impose tariffs, the economic centrepiece of Trump’s second term.

The case was brought by groups of American businesses, joined by 12 US states, that argued they had been harmed by the tariffs.

Trump returned to the White House last year vowing to use tariffs to remake a global trade order that he claimed had “ripped off” the US for decades.

Trump announced his tariff regime on “liberation day” last April, sparking weeks of turmoil in financial markets and alarming US allies. 

Although he has since backed away from imposing some of the most severe duties, the US ended 2025 with an effective tariff rate of more than 10 per cent — the highest since the second world war.

Stock markets have recovered in the intervening months to hit record highs, but polls indicate that many Americans think the tariffs are hurting the country’s economy.

FT reporters

Trump tariff tracker

Donald Trump has hit dozens of US trading partners with new tariffs while formalising recent trade deals with others, including the UK and EU.

Analysts at Yale Budget Lab estimate that, overall, the US effective tariff rate is now at its highest level since the 1930s.

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Myles McCormick in Washington and Kate Duguid in New York

US growth falls sharply to 1.4% rate in fourth quarter

Earlier on Friday, data showed that the US economy grew at an annualised rate of just 1.4 per cent in the fourth quarter, far below Wall Street expectations.

Friday’s figure from the Bureau of Economic Analysis was sharply down from 4.4 per cent in the previous three-month period and fell well short of expectations of 2.8 per cent in a Bloomberg poll of economists.

Growth was held back by a drop in government spending during the shutdown and a slowdown in consumer spending, the BEA said. That was offset slightly by an uptick in business investment.

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