Washington – A federal court in New York gave President Donald Trump a great setback on Wednesday, Blocking your bold plan Impose mass taxes on imports from almost all countries in the world.
A panel of three judges of the United States International Trade Court ruled that Trump exceeded his authority when he invoked the International Law of Emergency Economic Powers of 1977 to declare a national emergency and justify radical tariffs.
The tariffs revoked decades of American commercial policy, interrupted global trade, shook financial markets and increased the highest price and recession risk in the United States and worldwide.
The United States International Trade Court has jurisdiction on civil cases involving trade. Their decisions can be appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington and, ultimately, to the Supreme Court, where the legal challenges for Trump Tariffs are expected to end.
The Court’s decision blocks the rates that Trump slapped last month Almost all business partners and the levies imposed before China, Mexico and Canada.
On April 2, Trump imposed the so -called reciprocal tariffs of up to 50% in countries with which the United States has a commercial deficit and 10% basal tariffs on almost everyone else. Later he suspended reciprocal tariffs for 90 days to give countries time to reduce US exports barriers. But he kept reference rates instead. Claiming an extraordinary power to act without the approval of the Congress, justified taxes under IEEPA by declaring the long -standing commercial deficits of the United States “a national emergency.”
In February, he had invoked the law to impose tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China, saying that the illegal flow of immigrants and drugs on the United States border was equivalent to a national emergency and that the three countries needed to do more to stop it.
The United States Constitution gives Congress the power to establish taxes, including rates. But legislators have allowed the presidents to assume more power over tariffs, and Trump has taken advantage of it.
Tariffs are being challenged in at least seven demands. In the ruling on Wednesday, the Trade Court combined two of the cases, one brought by five small businesses and another by 12 states of the United States.
The ruling leaves other Trump rates, including those of foreign steel, aluminum and cars. But those levies were invoked under a different law that required an investigation by the Department of Commerce and could not be imposed on the president’s discretion.
The Administration had argued that the courts had approved the use of emergency tariffs of then President Richard Nixon in an economic and financial crisis of 1971 that arose when the United States suddenly devalued the dollar by ending a policy that linked the US currency with the price of gold. The Nixon administration successfully summoned its authority under the 1917 enemy trade law, which preceded and supplied part of the legal language used later in IEPPA.
The court did not agree, deciding that Trump’s radical tariffs exceeded their authority to regulate imports under Ieepa. He also said that the tariffs did nothing to deal with the problems that were supposed to address. In their case, the states indicated that the United States commercial deficits barely equals a sudden emergency. The United States has accumulated them for 49 consecutive years in good times and bad.
Wendy Cutler, a former American commercial official who is now a vice president of the Institute of Policy of the Asia Society, says that the decision of the court “throws the president’s commercial policy to the agitation.”
“The partners that negotiate hard during the pause period of the 90 -day rate can be tempted to stop the realization of more concessions to the USA. Until there is more legal clarity,” he said.
Similarly, companies will have to reassess the way they execute their supply chains, perhaps accelerating shipments to the United States to compensate for the risk that rates are restored in the appeal.
The Commercial Court said that Trump retains a more limited power to impose tariffs to address commercial deficits under another statute, the 1974 Commerce Law. But that law restricts tariffs at 15% and only for 150 days with countries with which the United States manages large commercial deficits.
For now, the commercial court ruling “destroys the justification of the Trump administration to use federal emergency powers to impose tariffs, which exceeds the authority of the Congress and contravenes any notion of due process,” said Eswar Prasad, professor of commercial policy at the University of Cornell. “The ruling makes it clear that the general tariffs imposed unilaterally by Trump represent an overreach of the Executive Power.”
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The AP Lindsay Whitehurst writer contributed to this story.
