Trump still reeling after the Supreme Court destroyed his favorite 'superpower'

President Donald Trump recently threatened to hit countries that sold weapons to Iran with a 50 percent tariff. As the Financial Times noted in a new report, this threat "was quickly brushed aside," where once it might have given other nations reason to pause.

As the Financial Times explained, this is just the latest example of how Trump is still reeling from the loss of his favorite "trade superpower" after the Supreme Court shot down the broad tariff authority he had been claiming throughout his first year in office. Using a dubious emergency declaration, Trump has claimed the ability to level and remove tariffs at will, using this as a way to intimidate or retaliate against nations that ran afoul of his desires.

In a ruling from earlier this year, however, the Supreme Court found that Trump's claimed authority was illegitimate, as only Congress had the ability to create new taxes, leaving him with tariff powers much, much more limited than before. With congressional Republicans wary of new taxes ahead of the midterms, it remains highly unlikely that they would go along with his desire for massive, wide-ranging duties against most imports.

That was not the end of Trump's tariff "misery" in court, as last week, another court ruled against the blanket 10 percent tariff that he had imposed after the Supreme Court loss, using a different authority. For now, the administration is stuck trying to appeal that ruling.

“The president has lost something important to him, which is the ability to threaten tariffs on a Friday and impose them on a Monday,” Michael Smart, the managing director at Rock Creek Global Advisors, told the Financial Times.

Myron Brilliant, of the Albright Stonebridge Group, added that "other countries are already treating Washington with less deference after the Supreme Court ruling," and are "rethinking, recalibrating, revising" their prior trade deals with Trump now that his biggest threat has been neutralized.

"Now, as he prepares to meet China’s President Xi Jinping in a long-awaited summit, Trump and his administration are trying to rebuild his power to impose tariffs on imports from around the globe," the Financial Times continued. "The problem for the U.S. president is that resistance is building in Congress, the tariffs are unpopular ahead of already challenging midterm elections and replacement measures may fall far short of providing him with the room for maneuver he seeks on the world stage."