Washington (AFP) – US President Donald Trump celebrated a temporary legal win as a court preserved his aggressive tariffs, triggering mixed reactions Friday across jittery financial markets. The short-term relief will allow the appeals process to proceed after the US Court of International Trade barred most of the tariffs announced since Trump took office, ruling on Wednesday that he had overstepped his authority.
Welcoming the latest twist in legal skirmishes over his trade policies, Trump lashed out at the Manhattan-based trade court, calling it “horrible” and saying its blockade should be “quickly and decisively” reversed for good. Asian shares fell on Friday, reversing a rally across world markets the previous day, as the judicial wrangling around Trump’s on-again-off-again tariffs fanned uncertainty. Paris, London, and Frankfurt were all in the green as EU trade chief Maros Sefcovic said following a call with US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick that the bloc was “fully invested” in reaching a deal with the United States.
Sefcovic could meet his US trade counterparts in Paris next week on the sidelines of an Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development ministerial meeting, an EU official said. US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Thursday that trade talks with China — the hardest hit by the tariffs — were “a bit stalled” and Trump might need to speak to President Xi Jinping in order to iron out tariffs between the world’s two biggest economies. “I think that given the magnitude of the talks, given the complexity, that this is going to require both leaders to weigh in with each other,” Bessent told Fox News after the ruling from the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, known as an administrative stay.
Washington and Beijing agreed this month to pause reciprocal tariffs for 90 days, a surprise de-escalation in their bitter trade war following talks between top officials in Geneva. Asked about Bessent’s comments at a regular news conference on Friday, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian said Beijing had “stated its position on the tariffs issue many times” in an apparent reference to the Asian manufacturing giant’s fury at the levies. Trump has moved to reconfigure US trade ties with the world since returning to the presidency in January, using levies to force foreign governments to the negotiating table.
However, the stop-start tariff rollout on both allies and adversaries has roiled markets and snarled supply chains. The White House had been given 10 days to halt affected tariffs before Thursday’s decision from the appeals court. The Trump administration called the block “blatantly wrong,” expressing confidence that the decision would be overturned on appeal. White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt told reporters that the judges “brazenly abused their judicial power to usurp the authority of President Trump.” Leavitt said the Supreme Court “must put an end” to the tariff challenge, while stressing that Trump had other legal means to impose levies.
A separate ruling by a federal district judge in the US capital found some Trump levies unlawful as well, giving the administration 14 days to appeal. Kevin Hassett, director of the National Economic Council, told Fox Business that “hiccups” sparked by the decisions of “activist judges” would not affect talks with trading partners, adding that three deals were close to finalization. Trump’s trade advisor Peter Navarro told reporters after the appellate stay that the administration had earlier received “plenty of phone calls from countries” who said they would continue to “negotiate in good faith,” without identifying those nations.
Trump’s import levies are aimed partly at punishing economies that sell more to the United States than they buy. The president has argued that trade deficits and the threat posed by drug smuggling constituted a “national emergency” that justified the widespread tariffs — a notion the Court of International Trade ruled against. Trump unveiled sweeping duties on nearly all trading partners in April at a baseline 10 percent, plus steeper levies on dozens of economies including China and the European Union that have since been paused.
The US trade court’s ruling quashed those blanket duties, along with others that Trump imposed on Canada, Mexico, and China separately using emergency powers. However, it left intact 25 percent duties on imported autos, steel, and aluminum. Beijing — which was hit by additional 145 percent tariffs before they were temporarily reduced to make space for negotiations — reacted to the trade court decision by saying Washington should scrap the levies. “China urges the United States to heed the rational voices from the international community and domestic stakeholders and fully cancel the wrongful unilateral tariff measures,” said commerce ministry spokeswoman He Yongqian. The trade court was ruling in two separate cases, brought by businesses and a coalition of state governments, arguing that the president had violated Congress’s power of the purse.
© 2024 AFP
