RV Arena, Whole U.S. Economy, Watching Tariff Litigation – RVBusiness – Breaking RV Industry News
WASHINGTON — A federal court in New York handed President Donald Trump a big setback Wednesday, blocking his audacious plan to impose massive taxes on imports from almost every country in the world, according to an Associated Press report.
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of International Trade ruled that Trump overstepped his authority when he invoked the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act to declare a national emergency and justify the sweeping tariffs.
The tariffs overturned decades of U.S. trade policy, disrupted global commerce, rattled financial markets and raised the risk of higher prices and recession in the United States and around the world.
The U.S. Court of International Trade has jurisdiction over civil cases involving trade. Its decisions can be appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington and ultimately to the Supreme Court, where the legal challenges to Trump’ tariffs are widely expected to end up.
Which tariffs did the court block?
The court’s decision blocks the tariffs Trump slapped last month on almost all U.S. trading partners and levies he imposed before that on China, Mexico and Canada.
On April 2, Trump imposed so-called reciprocal tariffs of up to 50% on countries with which the United States runs a trade deficit and 10% baseline tariffs on almost everybody else. He later suspended the reciprocal tariffs for 90 days to give countries time to agree to reduce barriers to U.S. exports. But he kept the baseline tariffs in place. Claiming extraordinary power to act without congressional approval, he justified the taxes under IEEPA by declaring the United States’ longstanding trade deficits “a national emergency.”
In February, he’d invoked the law to impose tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China, saying that the illegal flow of immigrants and drugs across the U.S. border amounted to a national emergency and that the three countries needed to do more to stop it.
The U.S. Constitution gives Congress the power to set taxes, including tariffs. But lawmakers have gradually let presidents assume more power over tariffs — and Trump has made the most of it.
The tariffs are being challenged in at least seven lawsuits. In the ruling Wednesday, the trade court combined two of the cases — one brought by five small businesses and another by 12 U.S. states.
The ruling does leave in place other Trump tariffs, including those on foreign steel, aluminum and autos. But those levies were invoked under a different law that required a Commerce Department investigation and could not be imposed at the president’s own discretion.
Click here to read the full Associated Press report.
