Just one day before sweeping—and in some cases massive—tariffs are set to take effect on goods from numerous countries, many of which have not struck trade deals with President Donald Trump, federal appeals court judges voiced skepticism that the administration has the legal authority to impose them.
The Trump administration claims a 1977 law, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), allows the President to impose and negotiate tariffs, but no other president has ever used it for that purpose.
“IEEPA doesn’t even say tariffs, doesn’t even mention them,” one of the eleven judges on a panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington, D.C. told Trump’s lawyers on Thursday, as USA Today reported.
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The plaintiffs—including several states and businesses—who are “challenging the tariffs argued that they are not permissible under IEEPA and that the U.S. Constitution grants Congress, and not the president, authority over tariffs and other taxes,” the paper also reported.
“One judge [wondered] if Trump has the extraordinary, unbounded power to tariff on basis of ’emergency’ — and that he has total discretion to [declare] an emergency — why would any president bother with longstanding trade powers that have more onerous limits?” reported Politico’s Kyle Cheney.
“Judges [also wondered] whether they can review Trump’s claim of an emergency over the trade deficit, which has been persistent for years,” Cheney noted.
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The U.S. Court of International Trade (CIT) earlier this year ruled Trump’s tariffs against goods from various nations including China, Mexico, and Canada were “unlawful,” as Law & Crime reported.
Observing that the Trump administration was “getting beaten up badly at oral arguments,” Washington Post columnist Jason Willick made this prediction:
“After this morning’s oral argument on Trump’s tariffs at a federal appeals court in D.C., the markets, the media and foreign countries will start taking much more seriously the possibility that Trump’s trade policy is in doubt.”
The Cato Institute’s Thomas Berry offered this view: “Holding that IEEPA does not authorize tariffs would be the cleanest and simplest way to resolve this case, and it appears that the Federal Circuit may be leaning toward that result.”
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