Appeals Court Briefs Say Trump's Tariffs Are Based on a Statute That Does Not Authorize Tariffs at All
In May, the U.S. Court of International Trade (CIT) ruled that President Donald Trump exceeded his statutory authority when he invoked the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to impose stiff, wide-ranging tariffs aimed at reducing drug trafficking and bilateral trade deficits. The Trump administration is now asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to reverse that decision. But in two briefs filed on Tuesday, the Cato Institute and New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA) argue that the CIT should have gone further by ruling that the IEEPA does not authorize tariffs at all.
The CIT decision in VOS Selections v. Trump dealt with two sets of tariffs: the import taxes on Chinese, Mexican, and Canadian goods that Trump presented as tools to coerce greater cooperation in the war on drugs and the “Liberation Day” tariffs on goods from nearly all countries, which he said would help reduce the gap between U.S. imports and exports. In both cases, the problems that Trump claimed to be addressing were longstanding: Drug-related deaths had been rising for decades, and the U.S. has not run a trade surplus since 1975. Yet in both cases, Trump asserted an “unusual and extraordinary threat” that constituted a “national emergency” under the IEEA, which he said justified his tariffs.
In separate lawsuits, a dozen states and several businesses argued that Trump was wrong about that. Addressing both lawsuits, a three-judge CIT panel unanimously agreed, saying neither set of tariffs was authorized by the IEEA. “We do not read IEEPA to delegate an unbounded tariff authority to the President,” the judges said. “We instead read IEEPA’s provisions to impose meaningful limits on any such authority it confers.”
Cato and the NCLA agree that the statute does not give the president “an unbounded tariff authority.” In fact, they argue in their Federal Circuit briefs, the IEAA does not give the president any tariff authority…
July 9, 2025
Originally Published in Reason