A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of International Trade has ruled that President Donald Trump “exceeded his authority” when he imposed his so-called “Liberation Day” tariffs on April 2.
The court also struck down the tariffs Trump imposed on Mexican, Canadian and Chinese imports with the stated aim of combatting fentanyl and drug trafficking from those countries.
In an unsigned opinion released Wednesday, the judges ruled the tariffs will be “vacated,” and they “permanently enjoined” the government from enforcing them.
They granted the plaintiffs summary judgment, rather than a temporary injuction, because they found “no genuine dispute as to any material fact.” The judges said the ruling would be enforced nationwide because unlawful tariffs cannot be collected from anyone, anywhere.
The Department of Justice immediately appealed the ruling.
The bombshell decision, which eviscerates major planks of Trump’s trade policy, came in response to a lawsuit in which the attorneys general of twelve states and a number of small American companies urged the court to strike down the import taxes on the grounds that Trump had exceeded his authority.
The attorney general of one of the 12 states that successfully blocked the tariffs, 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.”
The court noted that Trump’s tariffs exceed the authority Congress granted to presidents under his cited 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,” as required by law.
The court rejected the Trump administration’s arguments that claimed the president had broad authority in the current situation to impose tariffs under his emergency powers.
“An unlimited delegation of tariff authority would constitute an improper abdication of legislative power to another branch of government,” the judges noted, noting that “any interpretation of IEEPA that delegates unlimited tariff authority is unconstitutional.”
Attorneys for the government had argued that Trump’s decision to declare a national emergency and invoke his emergency economic powers was not reviewable by the courts. The did concede, however, that Congress could, in theory, reverse the tariffs by terminating the national emergency with a new law.
