The US Court of Appeals has ruled that most of US President Donald Trump’s global tariffs are illegal, FreightWaves reported.
The appeals court’s decision found that Trump had exceeded his authority in imposing the tariffs, the 29 August report said.
The ruling could affect Trump’s wide-ranging reciprocal tariffs announced on 2 April, as well as tariffs imposed on China, Canada and Mexico aimed at putting pressure on those countries to curb shipments of fentanyl into the USA, FreightWaves wrote.
The court has allowed the tariffs to remain in place until 14 October to give the administration time to appeal to the US Supreme Court.
Trump’s administration had relied on the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to argue that the president could impose country-specific tariffs at any level if deemed necessary to address a national emergency, the report said.
The appeals court’s decision upheld a ruling in May from the Court of International Trade, which had also rejected Trump’s argument that his global tariffs were permitted under the IEEPA, the BBC wrote.
Posting on Truth Social after the decision, Trump called the appeals court “highly partisan” and described the ruling as a “disaster” for the country, the 30 August report said.
The IEEPA, which has repeatedly been deployed by Trump during both his terms in office, grants a US president significant authority to respond to a national emergency or a major threat from overseas.
In its ruling, the appeals court stated that the emergency law “did not give the president wide-ranging authority to impose tariffs”.
The IEEPA “neither mentions tariffs (or any of its synonyms) nor has procedural safeguards that contain clear limits on the President’s power to impose tariffs”, it said.
When announcing his global tariffs, Trump claimed that a trade imbalance was harmful to US national security and was therefore a national emergency.
However, the court ruled that imposing tariffs was not within the president’s mandate, and “the power of the purse (including the power to tax) belongs to Congress”, the BBC wrote.
In addition to being a significant setback to Trump’s agenda, the federal appeals court ruling could have an immediate impact on the US economy, with knock-on impacts felt in global markets, the report said.
“Businesses are going to be subject to uncertainty,” Dr Linda Yueh, an economist at Oxford University and the London Business School, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
If the Supreme Court reverses the federal appeals court decision and sides with the Trump administration, it could set a precedent that emboldens the president to use the IEEPA more aggressively than he has done so far, according to the report.
The case was likely to proceed to the highest US court, a challenge that Trump indicated on Truth Social, the BBC wrote.
