HOUSTON, United States

The US Supreme Court decided Tuesday to grant the Trump administration's request to hear its appeal of lower court rulings that its global tariffs were illegal, putting its case on the fast track, according to media reports.

The nation's highest court, which presides on a 6-3 Republican majority, said it would hear oral arguments in the first week of its November session.

Several lower court rulings, including one on Aug. 29 from the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, concluded that President Donald Trump illegally overstepped the authority of the United States Congress to impose worldwide tariffs in which he slapped steep duties on imports from many countries earlier in the year.

In its request for an expedited appeal, the Trump administration warned that the Treasury Department could be forced to refund between $750 billion and $1 trillion in collected tariffs if the Supreme Court waited until next June to issue a decision on the case.

Attorneys for the Trump administration told the Court that the matter was urgent because the circuit court ruling "has disrupted highly impactful, sensitive, ongoing diplomatic trade negotiations and cast a pall of legal uncertainty over the President's efforts to protect our country by preventing an unprecedented economic foreign-policy crisis."

Trump had previously said that the ruling against his worldwide tariffs would "literally destroy the United States of America."

He invoked the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose the tariffs, but the Court of International Trade argued that the president's authority to regulate imports during a national emergency did not mean he could impose worldwide tariffs at will, with no expiration dates. The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit agreed with that assessment and upheld the lower court's decision.

The Supreme Court said it would consolidate the Trump administration's appeal of that ruling with a similar case in which a federal judge concluded that the president's tariffs were illegal.

Trump’s global tariffs remain in effect as the high court considers the appeal.