Another judge holds that Trump’s tariffs are illegal

The specialists have weighed in, now we can hear from the generalists:

A second federal court has ruled against President Donald Trump’s emergency tariffs on imports from around the world, dealing another blow to his trade agenda and efforts to strike new deals with dozens of countries.

“The International Economic Emergency Powers Act does not authorize the President to impose the tariffs set forth” in four executive orders Trump issued earlier this year, D.C. District Court Judge Rudolph Contreras said in a decision ordering a preliminary injunction on the collection of the duties on the two plaintiffs who brought the case.

Justice Department attorneys had urged Contreras not to approve the companies’ request for an injunction, saying it would act like a “magnet” in attracting thousands of other companies to challenge the duty.

“You shouldn’t issue this injunction, because will just cause one of the thousands of other companies adversely affected by the tariffs to sue based on their blatant unconstitutionality” can’t believe that argument didn’t work!

Too Hot For The Times Krugman has more on yesterday’s ruling:

Punitive tariffs on everyone, including the penguins of uninhabited islands, have been one of the Trump administration’s signature policies, along with epic corruption and abductions by masked men claiming to be federal agents. All of these policies have involved blatant violations of the letter of the law, its spirit, or both. But there has been very little effective pushback.

So it came as a shock yesterday when the United States Court of International Trade suddenly ruled that almost everything Trump has been doing on tariffs is illegal. The Court is clearly right on the merits. But I, like many observers, thought that we were past the point where the merits of cases mattered. It’s gratifying to learn that I was wrong.

[…]

Section 232 and a grab-bag of other measures weren’t going to be enough to get there. So Trump invoked the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977, which gives the president very broad powers under emergency conditions. And so he went ahead tariffing everyone, penguins included.

It turns out, however, that really major tariff changes are subject not to a quasi-judicial process involving MAGA loyalists, but to an actual judicial process involving the Court of International Trade, which is a real court populated by real judges appointed for life.

And the Court, to almost everyone’s surprise, decided to do its job. It basically said to Trump, “What is this economic emergency of which you speak?”

These rulings pose a very interesting strategic question for the Supreme Court, which we can explore in a future post. But it’s good to see at least some judges upholding the prerogatives of Congress, since a Republican-controlled Congress sure won’t do it.