In a major blow to Donald Trump, a US federal court on Wednesday (May 28) blocked the majority of the US president’s sweeping tariffs, a decision the White House said “unelected judges” have no right to weigh in on.
The US federal court, in its ruling, said that Trump, by igniting a global trade war, has overstepped his constitutional authority with across-the-board levies.
Not a blank cheque
The court’s ruling comes in two separate cases, which argue that the POTUS violated Congress’s power of the purse – brought forward by businesses and a coalition of state governments
The three-judge panel at the Court of International Trade also struck down Trump’s use of emergency powers to impose across-the-board import duties on countries China, Canada, Mexico, and the European Union. The court ruled that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) does not give the president a blank cheque to rewrite trade policy.
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“The question in the two cases before the court is whether the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 (“IEEPA”) delegates these powers to the president in the form of authority to impose unlimited tariffs on goods from nearly every country in the world,” wrote the three-judge panel in an unsigned opinion.
“The court does not read IEEPA to confer such unbounded authority and sets aside the challenged tariffs imposed thereunder,” it noted, adding that any interpretation that “delegates unlimited tariff authority is unconstitutional”.
White House reacts
The White House, as per AFP, has been given 10 days to complete the bureaucratic process and halt the tariffs.
Slamming the ruling, the White House argued that “unelected judges” have no right to weigh in on Trump’s handling of the issue.
“President Trump pledged to put America first, and the administration is committed to using every lever of executive power to address this crisis and restore American greatness,” said Trump’s spokesperson Kush Desai.
While the statement did not mention if Trump was seeking legal recourse, multiple US outlets said that his administration has already filed an appeal.
The Trump camp also reacted with fury. Stephen Miller, one of Trump’s closest White House aides on social media, decried a “judicial coup”, which he claimed was out of control.
Trump has long justified the tariffs as a response to “national emergencies” like trade deficits and drug trafficking. Critics like Gregory W. Meeks, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, however, say this was a “bogus” pretext. He said that the court has confirmed that “these tariffs are an illegal abuse of executive power.”
“Trump’s declaration of a bogus national emergency to justify his global trade war was an absurd and unlawful use of IEEPA,” he added.