US Appeals Court Skeptical of Trump Tariff Justification
Get caught up.
Amid a flurry of announcements of last-minute deals ahead of Donald Trump’s latest tariff deadline, the underlying legal justification for the US president’s global trade war was the subject of significant doubt before a panel of 11 members of the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington.
The highly anticipated hearing was to consider a lower court ruling finding the Republican president’s use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to circumvent Congress’s power to levy tariffs was, in fact, illegal. Neal Katyal, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, argued Trump’s citation of a statute that doesn’t even mention tariffs to launch an unprecedented trade war was a “breathtaking claim to power that no president has asserted in 200 years.”