by Misty Severi
A United States Court of Appeals on Tuesday paused a lower court’s order that determined President Donald Trump overstepped his authority with his latest attempt at global tariffs.
The U.S. Court of International Trade ruled 2-1 last week that Trump overstepped his authority by invoking Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 to impose a 10% global import duty, which he did without congressional approval.
The federal appeals court noted that the trade court did not widely block the tariff’s collection and ruled that while the order is paused, tariffs will resume for the two businesses and Washington state, which sued over the tariffs, per Reuters.
The appeals court ruling is currently a short-term administrative stay, but the court is considering a longer pause on the order.
The ruling comes after the president invoked the law shortly after the Supreme Court struck down his wide-scale tariffs. But the trade court said Trump misapplied the law by failing to identify the specific type of economic crisis the law requires and thus did not follow the specific balance-of-payments measures intended when it wrote the statute five decades ago.
The Liberty Justice Institute, a legal nonprofit representing the plaintiffs, celebrated the decision.
“Section 122 was passed in response to a specific historical crisis that resulted in the United States’s currency and gold reserves being depleted. Congress authorized the President to impose tariffs where the United States experienced fundamental international payments problems and needed to respond to large and serious balance-of-payments deficits,” said Jeffrey Schwab, senior counsel and director of litigation at the Liberty Justice Center. “That is not the situation here. The United States has a trade deficit, not a balance-of-payments deficit, and does not have international payments problems. The President cannot impose these tariffs under Section 122.”
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Misty Severi is a reporter for Just the News. Zachery Schmidt is the digital editor of The Star News Network and contributed to this story.
