Federal Circuit rules most Trump tariffs unlawful under IEEPA

A federal appeals court on Friday ruled that most of President Donald Trumps sweeping global tariffs were unlawfully imposed under a 1977 emergency statute, dealing a serious legal blow to a centerpiece of his second-term trade policy while leaving the levies in place temporarily as the administration prepares an appeal. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, in a 7 to 4 decision, affirmed a May ruling by the U.S. Court of International Trade that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act does not authorize the president to impose broad, open-ended import duties on nearly all trading partners.

The court concluded that IEEPA neither mentions tariffs nor includes procedural safeguards or explicit language that would permit the executive branch to levy taxes, duties or the like, and reiterated that the constitutional power to tax and set tariffs belongs to Congress, judges wrote. The decision preserves the earlier finding that the tariffs challenged were unbounded in scope, amount and duration. The panel stayed implementation of its ruling until October 14 to give the administration time to seek review by the U.S. Supreme Court.