A federal appeals court has dealt a stunning blow to Donald Trump’s sweeping tariff agenda, upholding an earlier ruling that found most of the president’s global levies were illegally imposed.
The unsigned opinion released on Friday by the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit states that the Carter-era International Emergency Economic Powers Act — the law Trump has repeatedly invoked when imposing sweeping import taxes on goods from most of the world — grants him “significant authority” to “undertake a number of actions in response to a declared national emergency.
But the appeals court, which specializes in cases dealing in specific and obscure areas of law such as international trade and patent law, found that “the power to impose tariffs, duties, or the like, or the power to tax” is not included in the 1977 law Trump has relied on.
The anticipated decision from the appellate court largely upholds an earlier ruling from a three-judge panel on the New York-based U.S. Court of International Trade, which found in May that Trump had wrongfully invoked the emergency law to impose the tariffs.
They unanimously agreed that IEEPA, which Trump invoked when he rolled out his Liberation Day agenda at an event in the White House Rose Garden on April 2, “neither mentions tariffs (or any of its synonyms) nor has procedural safeguards that contain clear limits on the president’s power to impose tariffs,” the appellate judges noted.
“The government has not pointed to any statute or judicial decision that has construed the power to regulate as including the authority to impose tariffs without the statute also including a specific provision in the statute authorizing tariffs,” they said.
Justice Department attorneys had argued that Trump’s use of IEEPA to impose import taxes was part of the president’s authority to conduct foreign policy and therefore not reviewable by courts.
But the judges rejected that claim, writing that they were “unpersuaded” by such arguments.
“While the president of course has independent constitutional authority in these spheres, the power of the purse (including the power to tax) belongs to Congress,” the judges wrote.
They added later that IEEPA “did not give the president wide-ranging authority to impose tariffs,” they said.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Independent. But the government is expected to eventually appeal the decision to the Supreme Court.
This is a developing story
