Washington (AFP) – The White House on Thursday blasted a federal court’s decision to block many of President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs and said it could take the matter to the Supreme Court. Since returning to the presidency in January, Trump has moved to reconfigure US trade ties with the world while using tariffs to force foreign governments to the negotiating table. However, the stop-start rollout of levies, impacting both allies and adversaries, has roiled markets and snarled supply chains.
The three-judge Court of International Trade ruled Wednesday that Trump had overstepped his authority and barred most of the tariffs announced since he took office. The court gave the administration 10 days to complete the process of halting affected tariffs. The White House called the ruling “blatantly wrong,” filing an appeal and expressing confidence that the decision would be overturned. White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt told reporters that the judges “brazenly abused their judicial power to usurp the authority of President Trump.”
In a court filing, the Justice Department called for an immediate administrative halt on the decision pending the appeal, stating the administration plans to seek emergency relief from the Supreme Court as soon as Friday. Leavitt asserted that the Supreme Court “must put an end” to the tariff challenge, though she stressed that Trump has other legal means to impose levies.
Trump’s trade advisor Peter Navarro said on Bloomberg Television: “Nothing’s really changed.” Kevin Hassett, director of the National Economic Council, told Fox Business that although officials have other options that would “take a couple of months” to implement, they are not planning to pursue these right now. He insisted that “hiccups” sparked by the decisions of “activist judges” would not affect negotiations with other trading partners, adding that three deals are close to finalization.
Trump’s import levies, aimed at punishing economies that sell more to the United States than they buy, have roiled global markets. The president has argued that trade deficits and the threat posed by drug smuggling constituted a “national emergency” that justified the widespread tariffs — which the court ruled against.
Trump unveiled sweeping import duties on nearly all trading partners in April, at a baseline 10 percent — plus steeper levies on dozens of economies including China and the EU, which have since been paused. The US court’s ruling also quashes duties that Trump imposed on Canada, Mexico, and China separately using emergency powers. However, it leaves 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 court ruling by stating that 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. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney welcomed the court decision but warned that trade ties were still “profoundly and adversely threatened” by sector-specific levies.
Asian markets rallied Thursday, but US indexes were mixed and Europe closed slightly down.
The federal 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. The judges stated that the cases rested on whether the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 (IEEPA) delegates such powers to the president “in the form of authority to impose unlimited tariffs on goods from nearly every country in the world.” They stated that any interpretation of the IEEPA that “delegates unlimited tariff authority is unconstitutional.” Analysts at London-based research group Capital Economics indicated that the case may end up with the Supreme Court but would likely not mark the end of the tariff war.
© 2024 AFP
