A federal appeals court has dealt a stunning blow to Donald Trump’s sweeping tariff agenda, upholding an earlier ruling that found most of the president’s global levies were illegally imposed.
Trump’s invocation of the law to impose his agenda grants him “significant authority” to “undertake a number of actions in response to a declared national emergency,” but it does not “explicitly include the power to impose tariffs, duties, or the like, or the power to tax,” according to Friday’s ruling.
The anticipated decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit largely upholds the ruling from the Court of International Trade that Trump had wrongfully invoked an emergency law to issue the tariffs.
But the appellate judges sent the case back to that lower court to determine whether a holistic decision extends beyond the parties in the case, which is expected to reach the Supreme Court for a final decision.
The emergency law that Trump invoked for his Liberation Day agenda in April “neither mentions tariffs (or any of its synonyms) nor has procedural safeguards that contain clear limits on the president’s power to impose tariffs,” the appellate judges noted.
“The government has not pointed to any statute or judicial decision that has construed the power to regulate as including the authority to impose tariffs without the statute also including a specific provision in the statute authorizing tariffs,” they said.
“While the president of course has independent constitutional authority in these spheres, the power of the purse (including the power to tax) belongs to Congress,” the judges wrote.
The International Emergency Economic Powers Act “did not give the president wide-ranging authority to impose tariffs,” they said.
This is a developing story
