Trump decides he'll FAFO on Supreme Court tariff ruling
The tariff ruling let President Trump blame judges and walk away from an unpopular policy. Instead, he attacked his own justices and announced new tariffs the people hate
This is a special edition of my normal Sunday data roundup. I have written an emergency analysis of the Supreme Court’s striking down of Donald Trump’s tariffs and his response. I show that by attacking the Court and doubling down on an unpopular policy, the president has put himself on the wrong side of a supermajority of voters on two fronts.
On deck here at Strength In Numbers this week: I’ll release the results of our latest poll on Trump’s presidency and the 2026 political climate, what voters really mean when they say the Democrats are “out of touch,” and how voters think about the economic consequences of mass deportations.
The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 on Friday, Feb. 20, that President Trump’s tariffs imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA! IEEPA!) are illegal. More than $160 billion in tariff revenue collected last year (far below the administration’s promises) is now in legal limbo, with the president refusing to say whether he’ll issue refunds to American businesses or consumers that paid the unlawful tax.
Hours after the decision, Trump decided that instead of taking the loss and moving on, he would instead “FAFO.” At a press conference, Trump called the majority justices — including three conservatives and two of his own appointees — a “disgrace to our nation” and his appointees “an embarrassment to their families.” The president announced new temporary tariffs of 10% on all imports via an obscure provision of a 1974 law, and then upped the rate to 15% via a post on his social media app. As of writing, a judge has not weighed in on the legality of these new taxes. Trump’s many other uses of emergency powers are in jeopardy, too.
But let’s focus on the narrow analytical question of how this will play with the public. In attacking the Court and doubling down on unpopular tariffs, the president has blundered a major political gift for the sake of ideology and a blind pursuit of his trade war. As I see it, the Court, by striking down Trump’s tariffs, permitted him to defiantly retreat from one of his most unpopular policies; he could have simply blamed the judiciary and moved on.
Instead, Trump put himself on the wrong side of two issues where supermajorities oppose him: tariffs, and obeying rulings by American judges.
I. Tariffs are unpopular, and staying that way
In looking at public opinion on tariffs, consider three questions. First is how Americans rate the president’s handling of trade policy. It is deeply underwater. In our Strength In Numbers/Verasight polling, Americans say by a margin of 19 points that they disapprove rather than approve how how he’s handling trade and tariffs. President Trump gets a worse grade on tariffs than he does on handling foreign policy, jobs and the economy, or his job overall.
National polling is only so easy to visualize. So you know what this looks like on the ground, consider the following map. A -20 margin nationally is pretty devastating electorally. My MRP analysis showed Trump underwater on trade in 40 out of 50 states. These 40 states are worth 80 votes in the Senate and 483 votes in the Electoral College (486 when you count Washington, D.C.)
And it’s not just my polling showing this. A new survey from ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos found 64% of Americans disapprove of Trump’s tariff handling. CNN/SSRS found 62% disapproval in January.
When measuring support for the president’s actual policy on tariffs, the results are just as bad. The Pew Research Center found in late January that 60% of adults disapprove of the administration increasing tariffs, and only 13% strongly approve. Our Strength In Numbers/Verasight poll found 56% opposed tariffs last August. And as I noted at the time:
When asked if it’s better to raise prices or protect jobs, the majority of voters choose lower prices. 33% of adults said “It’s worth it to raise prices if that means protecting American jobs and key industries,” whereas 54% responded “It is not worth it to pass tariffs if it means higher prices here at home.”
Finally, since tariffs impact prices and thus spending power, you could consider consumer sentiment partially a reading on tariffs. In January 2026, the Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence Index fell to its lowest reading since May 2014. The expectations component dropped to 65.1, well below the 80-point threshold that typically signals recession.
So by doubling down on tariffs, Trump is doubling down on a policy a supermajority of Americans disapprove of. If “tariff man” were a presidential candidate, he would lose by a larger margin in the Electoral College than Michael Dukakis did in 1988. Perhaps worse, in making a nasty scene at his press conference attacking the justices who ruled against him, Trump repeated a major error in his administration’s public relations strategy on tariffs by publicly associating himself with his unpopular policy.
II. 82% of Republicans say the president must obey the Court
Now, consider also the impact of publicly attacking the Supreme Court justices who invalidated his executive orders.
A Marquette Law School national survey, conducted January 21-28, found that 82% of Americans — including 76% of Republicans — said the president must obey Supreme Court rulings. In April 2025, a Pew poll found that 88% of adults said the Trump administration would need to stop an action if the Supreme Court ruled it illegal. That included 82% of Republicans.
So Trump responded to a ruling the public wanted, from an institution the public trusts, by attacking the justices and skirting the decision by announcing new tariffs under a different statute. Political scientist Seth Masket on Friday called it an “Andrew Jackson” moment.
There is a long history of presidents fighting the Supreme Court and losing. When the Supreme Court struck down key New Deal programs in 1935, for example, Franklin Delano Roosevelt publicly crashed out and attacked the court for what he called a “horse-and-buggy definition of interstate commerce.”
FDR’s private pollster Emil Hurja — who, before George Gallup, had built an innovative survey operation that gave the White House its first reliable read on public sentiment — showed Roosevelt that fighting the Court was a losing proposition. Hurja saw FDR’s approval slide after his angry public response and urged him to ease up on the rhetoric and change course. Roosevelt listened, pivoted to the Second New Deal, and his approval recovered. He rallied support in the Senate for the Wagner Act and the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. (I wrote about Hurja’s operation in detail in STRENGTH IN NUMBERS, the book version.)
But Trump has not taken the Roosevelt route.
III. Things could get worse before they get better (for Trump)
There are some outstanding questions about the impact of the Supreme Court’s decision. More than $160 billion in IEEPA tariff revenue collected through January is now in legal limbo. If the president does not return that money to American businesses, they will give the Democrats even more firepower in the midterms.
And this connects to something I wrote about on Tuesday. Trump won in 2024 by attracting anti-system voters — people who distrust institutions, many of whom also hold progressive economic views. Those voters didn’t sign up for higher prices. They signed up for someone who would fight the system on their behalf. Attacking the Court to impose a policy that raises costs on groceries, clothes, and electronics is the opposite of what those voters wanted. It’s fighting the system to make their lives worse, not better.
There’s also the role inflation plays in voters’ evaluations of Trump’s trade policies. The Federal Reserve has said Trump’s tariffs are solely responsible for excess inflation in the price of goods in 2025, and nonpartisan analysis has found the average household paid an extra $1,300 to the government because of his import taxes last year. Tariffs contribute to the public’s growing feeling that the president’s economic policies have made them worse off, not better:
And because most Americans don’t pay attention to the minutiae of policy debates, broader conditions and the vibes really matter. The economic vibes right now are clearly not good — and neither is the vibe of calling Supreme Court justices traitors because they don’t go along with your power grab.
The price of being obsessed with tariffs
Instead of retreating from an unpopular position when given a face-saving exit, Trump escalated on both fronts — attacking the court and reimposing the tariffs under new legal authority. Where FDR had Emil Hurja’s polling to show him the danger, Trump has shown, despite a comparative wealth of data on public attitudes, that he just doesn’t care where the public is on trade.
History suggests there is a high price for presidents who ignore the people, the Constitution, and attack the Court for their own gain. And never before has a president done that so routinely, and so publicly, as Donald Trump.
What you missed at Strength In Numbers this week
My Sunday article last week, covering the “hard data” that shows Trump is losing ground:
New polling averages on the Texas Senate race and other features at Strength In Numbers’ sister site 50+1:
My premium Deep Dive last Wednesday on America’s new swing voters, the anti-system voter. (Or: why Democrats should think about nominating AOC for president in 2028. I said THINK ABOUT it, not DO IT.)
The week SIN live podcast!
And my Friday COTW, on why I think the Democratic strategy on the DHS shutdown over ICE reforms is smart, even if they don’t get what they want.
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Trump has no ideology. He has no political philosophy. Everything is about "me." And he is reacting like a 2 year old to be told "no."
And they say women are too emotional.
Trump isn't doing this because of ideology [he has none] or policy. He's a malignant narcissist, and his ego can't handle being told 'no', especially in such a public, resounding way. Think of a bratty toddler being told not to throw his toys again. Trump is reacting to having his tariff toy taken away the way he reacted to losing the 2020 election, which as an incumbent he should have won. It was a public humiliation that caused a deep, weeping narcissistic injury that hasn't healed to this day. As in 2020, Trump is reacting to the Court's decision with rage and belligerence. And doesn't care that his behavior is deeply unpopular, illegal or likely to cause republicans even more damage in November.