A conservative legal group is suing the Trump administration over the president’s tariffs on Chinese imports, alleging that they were imposed through an “unlawful” use of emergency executive power.
The 29-page complaint filed Thursday by the New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA) in the Northern District of Florida alleges that the authority to impose tariffs lies with Congress, not the president.
“By invoking emergency power to impose an across-the-board tariff on imports from China that the statute does not authorize, President Trump has misused that power, usurped Congress’s right to control tariffs, and upset the Constitution’s separation of powers,” NCLA senior litigation counsel Andrew Morris said in a statement accompanying the lawsuit.
According to the nonprofit group, the statutes under which Trump purported to issue the levies — the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 (IEEPA) — grants the executive sweeping authority to quickly combat international economic crises, permitting the president to “order sanctions as a rapid response to international emergencies.” However, the NCLA asserts that the emergency statute does not allow the president to usurp the legislative branch’s control of the country’s purse strings through the unilateral imposition of tariffs.
“Congress passed the IEEPA to counter external emergencies, not to grant presidents a blank check to write domestic economic policy,” the complaint states.
Posted by miss_shivers
9 Comments
Fucking finally
The enemy of my enemy…
!ping LAW
Same firm that successfully sued to end Chevron deference. This is a big deal.
Finally
I don’t understand American administrative law principles, but Trump’s use of delegated tariff powers has always struck me as flagrantly crazy. Like the Canada fentanyl stuff, it’s just the thinnest veneer of a justification. If a municipality did this Hugo Chavez shit on a rezoning it would get dicked so hard on judicial review.
And, like, there’s trillions on the line here. I can’t believe it took this long for interest groups to challenge this conduct.
Does anyone know how likely it is that the Supreme Court would take this seriously? It’s also interesting because Trump appears to view this as a central political goal of his and if the Supreme Court rules against him, he might feel motivated to openly defy them.
#let them fite
These are the libertarians right? The ones near the middle? They are the die hard constitutionalists after all
They should have just stayed home and kept grilling rather than going out to vote. They could have avoided all this. Foolish bastards.