A panel of three federal judges late Wednesday unanimously ruled that U.S. President Donald Trump overstepped his authority by invoking emergency powers to impose broad-based tariffs on imports, a significant blow to a trade agenda that has wreaked havoc on small businesses, consumers, and the global economy.
The judges on the U.S. Court of International Trade, including one Trump appointee, halted the 10% import tariffs that Trump unilaterally imposed in April on goods from nearly every country, as well as additional levies on certain products from Canada and Mexico.
The International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977, which Trump cited as the authority underlying his tariff scheme, does not confer "such unbounded authority" to the president, the court ruled Wednesday.
Melinda St. Louis, director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch, said in a statement that "Trump abused sweeping, unstrategic tariffs as part of a corrupt, authoritarian power grab to bully foreign countries and force U.S. companies to bend the knee to him and his billionaire friends."
"We welcome the court's decision striking down Trump's misuse of tariffs," St. Louis added.
The Trump administration almost immediately signaled plans to file an appeal in the case, which could ultimately wind up before the conservative-dominated U.S. Supreme Court.
Economist Paul Krugman wrote in response to the Wednesday decision that "presumably the Trumpists will try to undo this judgment, one way or another—exploiting other loopholes in the law, maybe trying to bully the court into submission, maybe just defying the court altogether."
"But this is a huge political defeat," Krugman added, "and Trump has nobody to blame except his own overreach."
