Federal Court Blocks Trump’s Sweeping ‘Liberation Day’ Tariffs

A U.S. federal court blocked President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs that slapped steep hikes on goods from dozens of foreign countries.

The New York-based Court of International Trade ruled on Wednesday that the president overstepped his authority in issuing the wide-ranging tariffs under emergency authority. The court said that the Constitution gives Congress the authority to regulate commerce with foreign countries, not the president.

The court effectively dissolved all tariffs Trump put in place using the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, a 1977 law that had never been used to implement tariffs until Trump.

“The question in the two cases before the court is whether the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 (‘IEEPA’) delegates these powers to the President in the form of authority to impose unlimited tariffs on goods from nearly every country in the world,” the court wrote. “The court does not read IEEPA to confer such unbounded authority and sets aside the challenged tariffs imposed thereunder.”

A three-judge panel issued the ruling based on two separate lawsuits – one brought by a group of businesses and the other filed on behalf of a dozen states.

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“Because of the Constitution’s express allocation of the tariff power to Congress … we do not read IEEPA to delegate an unbounded tariff authority to the President. We instead read IEEPA’s provisions to impose meaningful limits on any such authority it confers,” the panel wrote. “The Worldwide and Retaliatory Tariffs lack any identifiable limits.”

The judges also said that there is no recognizable emergency to justify the use of the IEEPA to issue sweeping tariffs.

“The challenged Tariff Orders will be vacated and their operation permanently enjoined,” the judges wrote.

The order strikes a blow to what had been one of the key pillars of Trump’s economic policy. The Trump administration has alternatively defended tariffs as a way to rebuild U.S. manufacturing and also to pressure foreign countries into cutting better, more open trade agreements. Trump has also used tariffs to force other concessions on issues such as immigration and drug enforcement.