Triumphant in trade talks, Trump and his tariffs still face a challenge in federal court

By PAUL WISEMAN Associated Press Economics Writer WASHINGTON AP President Donald Trump has been getting his way on commerce strong-arming the European Union Japan and other partners to accept once unthinkably high taxes on their exports to the United States But his radical overhaul of American bargain initiative in which he s bypassed Congress to slam big tariffs on majority of the world s economies has not gone unchallenged He s facing at least seven lawsuits charging that he s overstepped his authority The plaintiffs want his biggest boldest tariffs thrown out Related Articles All the strategies Republicans want to honor Trump from the bill to Mount Rushmore Battenfeld Joe Kennedy III trying to reinvent Camelot and his image Republicans consider changing Senate rules to speed confirmation of Trump nominees Senate confirms Trump s pick for counterterrorism agency a former Green Beret with extremist ties Judge orders Trump administration to explain why order to restore Voice of America wasn t followed And they won Round One In May a three-judge panel of the U S Court of International Commerce a specialized federal court in New York ruled that Trump exceeded his powers when he declared a national emergency to plaster taxes tariffs on imports from almost every country in the world In reaching its decision the court combined two challenges one by five businesses and one by U S states into a single event Now it goes on to Round Two On Thursday the judges on the U S Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington which typically specializes in patent law are scheduled to hear oral arguments from the Trump administration and from the states and businesses that want his sweeping import taxes struck down That court earlier allowed the federal administration to continue collecting Trump s tariffs as the situation works its way through the judicial system The issues are so weighty involving the president s power to navigate around Congress and impose taxes with huge economic consequences in the United States and abroad that the scenario is widely expected to reach the U S Supreme Court regardless of what the appeals court decides Trump is an unabashed fan of tariffs He sees the import taxes as an all-purpose economic tool that can bring manufacturing back to the United States protect American industries raise revenue to pay for the massive tax cuts in his One Big Beautiful Bill pressure countries into bending to his will even end wars The U S Constitution gives the power to impose taxes including tariffs to Congress But lawmakers have gradually relinquished power over deal strategy to the White House And Trump has made the majority of of the power vacuum raising the average U S tariff to more than highest since according to the Budget Lab at Yale University At issue in the pending court event is Trump s use of the International Urgency Economic Powers Act IEEPA to impose sweeping tariffs without seeking congressional approval or conducting investigations first Instead he asserted the authority to declare a national urgency that justified his import taxes In February he cited the illegal flow of drugs and immigrants across the U S demarcation to slap tariffs on Canada China and Mexico Then on April Liberation Day Trump called it he invoked IEEPA to announce reciprocal tariffs of up to on countries with which the United States ran exchange deficits and a baseline tariff on almost everybody else The urgency he cited was America s long-running commerce deficit Trump later suspended the reciprocal tariffs but they remain a threat They could be imposed again Friday on countries that do not pre-empt them by reaching bargain agreements with the United States or that receive letters from Trump setting their tariff rates himself FILE President Donald Trump speaks during an event to announce new tariffs in the Rose Garden at the White House on April in Washington AP Photo Mark Schiefelbein File The plaintiffs argue that the exigency power laws does not authorize the use of tariffs They also note that the contract deficit hardly meets the definition of an remarkable and extraordinary threat that would justify declaring an exigency under the law The United States after all has run agreement deficits in which it buys more from foreign countries than it sells them for straight years and in good times and bad The Trump administration argues that courts approved President Richard Nixon s emergency use of tariffs in a economic emergency The Nixon administration successfully cited its authority under the Trading With Enemy Act which preceded and supplied a few of the legal language used in IEEPA In May the pact court rejected the argument ruling that Trump s Liberation Day tariffs exceed any authority granted to the President under the urgency powers law The president doesn t get to use open-ended grants of authority to do what he wants declared Reilly Stephens senior counsel at the Liberty Justice Center a libertarian legal group that is representing businesses suing the Trump administration over the tariffs In the event of the drug trafficking and immigration tariffs on Canada China and Mexico the deal court ruled that the levies did not meet IEEPA s requirement that they deal with the predicament they were supposed to address The court challenge does not cover other Trump tariffs including levies on foreign steel aluminum and autos that the president imposed after Commerce Department investigations concluded that those imports were threats to U S national measure Nor does it include tariffs that Trump imposed on China in his first term and President Joe Biden kept after a leadership research concluded that the Chinese used unfair practices to give their own machinery firms an edge over rivals from the United States and other Western countries