Tariffs are on for now thanks to appeals court in win for Trump
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President Donald Trump’s tariffs can continue for now, after an appeals court granted the administration’s request to temporarily stay a lower court’s order.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit said Thursday afternoon that it would temporarily pause the effects of a decision from the Court of International Trade, which ruled Wednesday that most of Trump’s tariffs were illegal and must be halted.
The Trump administration said in a court filing earlier in the day that it would ask the Supreme Court for emergency relief if the appeals court didn’t quickly pause the ruling.
The pause is just the latest move in a tumultuous trade war, which began earlier this year when Trump announced sweeping tariffs against nearly every country around the world. The back-and-forth tariff policies, which have changed constantly this year, have created uncertainty for businesses that import and export products, and for consumers who rely on products manufactured abroad.
The Court of International Trade dealt a blow to Trump’s aggressive trade policy Wednesday when it ruled that Trump exceeded his authority in imposing tariffs on all imported goods.
The law he used to impose the tariffs, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, did not allow for such sweeping levies, it said. The court noted that the IEEPA says the president may only use his emergency powers “to deal with an unusual and extraordinary threat with respect to which a national emergency has been declared.”
The Trump administration quickly asked the federal appeals court to pause the decision. On Thursday, the court did just that, asking both the administration and the states and businesses who brought the suit to respond in early June.
The Liberty Justice Center, which filed one of the original suits challenging the tariffs that led to this decision, said in a statement Thursday that the pause is “merely a procedural step as the court considers the government’s request for a longer stay pending appeal.”
Separately, a second federal court also ruled Thursday that many of Trump’s tariffs are unlawful. The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that the emergency economic powers law Trump invoked to impose many of the tariffs did not enable him to “unilaterally impose, revoke, pause, reinstate and adjust tariffs to reorder the global economy.”
The Trump administration has protested the courts’ involvement in its trade policy. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said at a briefing Thursday that the courts shouldn’t have a role in this issue.
“The president’s rationale for imposing these powerful tariffs was legally sound and grounded in common sense,” she said.
Legal experts have told The Washington Post that the lawsuits are likely to succeed if they make it to the Supreme Court. Tim Meyer, the co-director of the Center for International and Comparative Law at Duke University Law School, said the president is “overwriting” legislation that Congress passed to levy tariffs.
“When the White House is itself touting this as the largest tax increase in American history, I think that’s going to make the justices sit back and think the Constitution gives Congress, and Congress alone, the authority to levy duties, impose tariffs and to regulate foreign commerce,” said Meyer, who clerked for Supreme Court Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, a Trump-nominated Supreme Court justice, when he served on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit.
The ruling adds fresh uncertainty to the world of American importers and more than one dozen ongoing U.S. trade negotiations, including those with the European Union and China.