A coalition of 25 Democrat-led states sued the Trump administration, saying the president exceeded his authority by imposing sweeping tariffs on goods from 60 trading partners.
The complaint was filed in the U.S. Court, challenging tariffs of 10% or 12.5% on most goods imported from the affected economies, which together account for 99.4% of U.S. imports, according to the 25 states.
The new tariffs have been announced after the Supreme Court struck down Trump’s previous sweeping tariff measures earlier this year. The administration is now imposing tariffs under the Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, which permits the president to impose import taxes and other sanctions against countries found to engage in unfair trade practices. Trump used Section 301 to impose big tariffs on China in his first term, and they survived court challenges.
“After losing at the Supreme Court, the administration is once again trying to illegally raise taxes on families and businesses with a new round of tariffs,” New York Attorney General Letitia James said in a statement.
In addition to New York, the attorneys general of Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin joined the lawsuit. The governors of Kentucky and Pennsylvania also joined the legal challenge.
“The United States is using its lawful authority to obtain the elimination of unreasonable acts, policies, and practices that burden U.S. commerce,” White House spokesman Kush Desai said. “A foreign country’s failure to impose and effectively enforce a prohibition on the importation of goods produced with forced labor is unreasonable and burdens U.S. commerce, including American workers, and must be addressed. Section 301 tariffs have proven to be a legally durable tool since the President’s first term, and they remain so now.”
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This comes after two other lawsuits were filed last month in The Court of International Trade in July by small businesses that also challenged the tariffs under Section 301. The two lawsuits stated that the government didn’t adequately establish its case against each specific economy or spell how the tariffs will eliminate the specified practice they are being levied for, as required by Section 301.
Barry Appleton, a law professor and co-director of New York Law School’s Center for International Law, said the challenges stem from the fact that the Section 301 tariffs mark the third time the administration has attempted to impose similar worldwide tariffs under different statutes. Their “nearly copy-pasted” nature could make them more difficult to defend in court, he
said. He added that, unlike the statutes the administration previously invoked—which had not been used for that purpose before—Section 301 has an established history of being used to impose tariffs.