Trade Court Strikes Down DJT’s Tariffs

A three judge panel on the Court of International Trade unanimously ruled that Donald Trump exceeded “any authority granted” by the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, so his use of tariffs is unlawful.

The decision applied to two cases: one by a handful of small businesses and another by 12 Democratic state Attorneys General.

The tariffs he imposed are not to be collected. The tariffs he halted against Canada, Mexico, and China had supposedly been imposed to reduce drug smuggling, and the panel ruled these tariffs and their halts “fail because they do not deal with the threats set forth in those orders.” To clarify, the court said, “Customs’s collection of tariffs on lawful imports does not evidently relate to foreign governments’ efforts ‘to arrest, seize, detain, or otherwise intercept’ bad actors within their respective jurisdictions.”

The halt to Trump’s tariffs is permanent and future modifications to them are prohibited by the court’s ruling. Trump has 10 days to carry out the court’s orders.

The power to impose tariffs is held by Congress, not the President. Trump declared a national economic emergency in order to trigger the 1977 IEEPA law, which lends tariff authority to the President in an economic crisis so dire that action must be taken faster than Congress can act. But he declared an emergency falsely and that makes bypassing Congress illegitimate.

The ruling does not affect tariffs that were imposed without using the IEEPA and remain in place on specific products such as steel and aluminum.

Futures for the Dow Jones stock market index soared 500 points after the ruling.

Trump’s regime immediately filed an appeal with the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. The case is likely to continue to the Supreme Court.

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