A US appeals court has granted the Trump administration a temporary reprieve for the president’s aggressive tariff measures, just a day after the Court of International Trade found the duties illegal.
The latest ruling by an appellate court will allow the government to continue collecting foreign taxes as part of US President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariff measures, reconfiguring US trade ties with the world.
Prior to Thursday’s decision from the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, known as an administrative stay, the White House was given 10 days to halt affected tariffs.
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 naming those nations.
‘Activist judges’
Trump on Friday trade court’s ruling “political and horrible”, saying, “The ruling by the U.S. Court of International Trade is so wrong, and so political! Hopefully, the Supreme Court will reverse this horrible, Country threatening decision, QUICKLY and DECISIVELY. Backroom “hustlers” must not be allowed to destroy our Nation! The horrific decision stated that I would have to get the approval of Congress for these Tariffs.”
The ruling by the trade court drew the ire of government officials who described the move as an example of “judicial overreach”. “The political branches, not courts, make foreign policy and chart economic policy,” the government said in its appeal, which sought emergency relief from the Supreme Court.
White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said, “America cannot function if President Trump, or any other president, for that matter, has their sensitive diplomatic or trade negotiations railroaded by activist judges.”
Leavitt said the Supreme Court “must put an end” to the tariff challenge, while stressing that Trump had other legal means to impose levies.
‘Extraordinary threat’ -
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.
The judges said 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.”
Impact Shorts
View AllThe judges stated that any interpretation of the IEEPA that “delegates unlimited tariff authority is unconstitutional.”
Analysts at London-based research group Capital Economics said the case may end up with the Supreme Court, but would likely not mark the end of the tariff war.
With inputs from agencies