A three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of International Trade has ruled that President Donald Trump exceeded his authority when he put in place his widespread tariffs on April 2, which he dubbed “Liberation Day” and has also struck down the tariffs Trump imposed on Mexican, Canadian and Chinese imports with the aim of combatting fentanyl and drug trafficking.
In an unsigned opinion released on Wednesday, the judges said the tariffs would be “vacated” and “permanently enjoined” the government from enforcing them because the tariffs Trump has imposed exceed the authority Congress granted to presidents under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, a 1977 law which lays out how the executive can impose import taxes in limited circumstances pursuant to a national emergency.
The judges said Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs, which set a 10 percent baseline tax on all imports and even higher taxes on imports from nearly every one of America’s trading partners, “exceed any authority granted to the President by IEEPA to regulate importation by means of tariffs.” They also rejected Trump’s use of the emergency powers to tax Mexican, Canadian and Chinese imports because those tariffs don’t specifically “deal with an unusual and extraordinary threat with respect to which a national emergency has been declared.
In doing so, the court rejected the Trump administration’s arguments which claimed that Trump had broad authority to impose tariffs under his emergency powers, citing both the “non delegation doctrine,” which prohibits one branch from delegating its own powers to another, as well as the “major questions doctrine,” a more recent constitutional doctrine which the Supreme Court has used to strike down presidential actions that deal with “major political or economic significance” absent clear and explicit authorization from Congress.
“These tools indicate that an unlimited delegation of tariff authority would constitute an improper abdication of legislative power to another branch of government. Regardless of whether the court views the President’s actions through the nondelegation doctrine, through the major questions doctrine, or simply with separation of powers in mind, any interpretation of IEEPA that delegates unlimited tariff authority is unconstitutional,” the judges said.
Attorneys for the government had also argued that Trump’s decision to declare a national emergency and invoke his emergency economic powers was not reviewable by the courts, while conceding that Congress could, in theory, reverse the tariffs by terminating the national emergency with a new law.
But the judges said the IEEPA required more than an emergency declaration alone, citing the law’s requirement for “an unusual and extraordinary threat with respect to which a national emergency has been declared” and its prohibition on using that authority “for any other purpose,” and they rejected the administration’s claim that Congress alone could reject the tariffs because that branch “should not have to enact new statutes to enforce the statutory constraints it has already enacted.”
Moreover, they found that the use of tariffs did not appropriately “deal with” the drug trafficking problem cited by Trump in his declaration and rejected the administration’s argument that Trump could use the emergency tariff powers to “pressure” the foreign governments.
“The Government’s ‘pressure’ argument effectively concedes that the direct effect of the country-specific tariffs is simply to burden the countries they target. It is the prospect of mitigating this burden, the Government explains, that will induce the target countries to crack down on trafficking within their jurisdictions … But however sound this might be as a diplomatic strategy, it does not comfortably meet the statutory definition of ‘deal[ing] with’ the cited emergency. It is hard to conceive of any IEEPA power that could not be justified on the same ground of ‘pressure,’” they said.
The judges said they would grant the plaintiffs summary judgment because they found “no genuine dispute as to any material fact,” rather than the injunction the plaintiffs had asked for. They also said the ruling would be enforced nationwide because unlawful tariffs cannot be collected from anyone, anywhere if they were ruled to be unlawful for the plaintiffs in the case.
The bombshell ruling, which eviscerates major planks of Trump’s trade policy, came in response to a lawsuit in which the attorneys general of twelve states urged the court to strike down the import taxes on the grounds that Trump had exceeded his authority.
The attorney general of one of those states, Kris Mayes of Arizona, took to X on Wednesday night to celebrate the news.
“Big news! The US Court of International Trade just struck down Trump’s illegal tariff scheme as invalid under [the International Emergency Economic Powers Act],” Mayes wrote. “The president does not have the authority to implement tariffs unilaterally. Glad to have co-led this case with Oregon to protect Arizona families and small biz.”
A White House spokesperson, Kush Desai. savaged the ruling in a statement in which he claimed that the court had not disputed the fact that “foreign countries’ nonreciprocal treatment of the Unites States” had “ fueled America’s historic and persistent trade deficits” which had in turn “created a national emergency that has decimated American communities, left our workers behind, and weakened our defense industrial base.”
“It is not for unelected judges to decide how to properly address a national emergency. President Trump pledged to put America First, and the Administration is committed to using every lever of executive power to address this crisis and restore American Greatness,” he said.
The White House did not say if the Trump administration would appeal the ruling, but it has routinely asked for higher courts to reject the decisions of lower courts that have gone against the government.
They have had some success in convincing various circuit courts of appeal and the U.S. Supreme Court to temporarily block adverse rulings while litigation continues in lower courts, but in this case they may not have that same success.
That’s because the U.S. Court of International Trade is a specialized court charged with hearing case dealing with trade-related disputes and laws, and the court’s decisions must first be appealed to another unique court, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.
That court is another specialized court that has national jurisdiction, and it happens to be the only one of the nation’s appellate courts to which Trump has not appointed a single judge.
The court’s national reach means the Trump administration won’t be able to ask the Supreme Court to intervene based on a disagreement between circuit courts in different parts of the country. And the high court has often been loath to intervene when asked to take up appeals of Federal Circuit decisions in the past.
