NATIONWIDE — STOPPING PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP’S LATEST SET OF TARIFFS is the goal of a lawsuit that New York Attorney General Letitia James and a coalition of 21 other attorneys general and two governors initiated on Thursday to the U.S. Court of International Trade. The litigation is in response to the president’s new proclamation that imposes tariffs on a range of countries and goods using Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, which he did shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of James’ previous coalition to stop president’s tariffs imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.
The coalition argues in their latest lawsuit that these new tariffs are illegal because the president’s primary rationale for imposing them is the country’s trade deficit – not a legitimate reason under Section 122. Trump is the first president to impose tariffs using Section 122, a law designed for narrow situations, to allow limited tariffs to address specific monetary crises related to fix-rate exchange systems like the gold standard, which the U.S. eliminated in 1971.
The coalition argues that the tariffs violate the Constitution’s protection of the separation of powers, and it seeks a court order to declare the tariffs imposed under Section 122 unlawful and to require the federal government to refund the states for the tariff costs that they paid as a result of the president’s proclamation.
✰✰✰
