Donald Trump is fending off lawfare like no other President before him.
The foundation of Trump’s agenda is under siege.
And Donald Trump just suffered this bad loss in court that will make his blood boil.
Obscure court blocks Liberation Day tariffs
Most Americans had never heard of the Court of International Trade before.
The New York-based tribunal is now a household name.
That’s because a three judge panel – consisting of one Reagan, Obama, and Trump appointees – issued a summary judgment blocking all of the Liberation Day tariffs President Trump imposed on April 2 as part of a strategy to renegotiate global trade deals to favor American workers.
In their ruling, the three judges held that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 (IEEPA) didn’t grant the President the unilateral authority to impose tariffs since the Constitution reserves the right to levy taxes to Congress.
“The Constitution assigns Congress the exclusive powers to ‘lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises,’ and to ‘regulate Commerce with foreign Nations.’ U.S. Const. art. I, § 8, cls. 1, 3. 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 he court does not read IEEPA to confer such unbounded authority and sets aside the challenged tariffs imposed thereunder,” the ruling read.
The judges also rejected the notion that the President’s ability to declare a national emergency under IEEPA wasn’t reviewable by the courts.
“IEEPA requires more than just the fact of a presidential finding or declaration: ‘The authorities granted to the President by section 1702 of this title may only be exercised to deal with an unusual and extraordinary threat with respect to which a national emergency has been declared for purposes of this chapter and may not be exercised for any other purpose.’ 50 U.S.C. § 1701(b) (emphasis added). This language, importantly, does not commit the question of whether IEEPA authority ‘deal[s] with an unusual and extraordinary threat’ to the President’s judgment. It does not grant IEEPA authority to the President simply when he ‘finds’ or ‘determines’ that an unusual and extraordinary threat exists,” the ruling went on to say.
Global chaos
This ruling not only ended the tariffs for now, but it also created chaos in the global economy.
President Trump was in the middle of negotiations with 18 key trading partners and the courts yanked away his number one bargaining chip.
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller slammed the court for usurping the President’s ability to conduct foreign policy.
“The judicial coup is out of control,” Miller posted on X.
This case should swiftly make its way to the Supreme Court.
But it is yet another front in the escalating war the judiciary is waging against the idea that President Trump has the right to be President and carry out his agenda.
