TMTPOST — The White House appealed on Wednesday soon after a ruling by the U.S. Court of International Trade dealt a blow to President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs.
Credit：Xinhua News Agency
The three-judge Court of International Trade in Manhattan ruled unanimously for a group of small businesses and Democratic-led states in finding that Trump had overstepped the bounds of his executive authority. The court orderd permanently halt orders regarding tariffs and barred all modifications to them, effectively blocking the Trump administration’s tariffs dating back to February 1, including the reciprocal tariffs against almost all the U.S. trading partners announced on April 2, the self-proclaimed “Liberation Day”.
The panel of federal judges ruled the the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 (IEEPA), that Trump invoked to justify the tariffs, doesn’t authorize any of the Trump’s tariff order. “The court does not read IEEPA to confer such unbounded authority and sets aside the challenged tariffs imposed thereunder,” the judges said in their decision.
“The Worldwide and Retaliatory Tariff Orders exceed any authority granted to the President by IEEPA to regulate importation by means of tariffs. The Trafficking Tariffs fail because they do not deal with the threats set forth in those orders,” the judges wrote in their ruling.
The Worldwide and Retaliatory Tariff Orders were referred to as reciprocal tariffs, while the Trafficking Tariffs are those levies on Canada, Mexico and China tied to the fentanyl crisis. Trump said on April 9 he has authorized a 90-day pause and “a substantially lowered reciprocal tariff” of 10% during this period, both effective immediately. The pause on tariffs is set to end on July 9, and countries failing to make a deal with U.S. before that date will face up to 50% reciprocal tariffs.
The IEEPA authorizes the president to regulate importation by imposing an import duty surcharge related to the particular nature of the emergency, and the words “regulate… importation” may exist in identical from in IEEPA, but “those words do not confer unlimited tariff authority,” the court said in the ruling.
The Trump administration appealed the trade court’s ruling Wednesday night to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.
“It is not for unelected judges to decide how to properly address a national emergency,” White House spokesperson Kush Desai said in a statement. He added that the administration is “committed to using every lever of executive power to address this crisis and restore American Greatness.”
Desai noted Foreign countries’ nonreciprocal treatment of the United States has fueled America’s “historic and persistent trade deficits”, which have created “a national emergency that has decimated American communities, left our workers behind, and weakened our defense industrial base – facts that the court did not dispute.”
U.S. stock futures rose late Wednesday after the trade court ruled Trump had exceeded his authority in imposing a raft of his global tariffs.
Dow Jones Industrial Average futures gained more than 580 points, or nearly 1.4%, S&P 500 futures jumped more than 1.6%, and Nasdaq-100 futures popped around 2%.
