The court held that the tariffs were not allowed under the Trade Act.
The U.S. Department of Justice on May 8 filed an appeal of the U.S. Court of International Trade’s decision striking down President Donald Trump’s global tariffs.
The tariffs, which the trade court invalidated with a 2–1 vote on May 7, consisted of a temporary 10 percent value-based import duty layered atop existing tariffs on most goods entering the United States from all countries. The dissenting judge said it was premature to rule on the dispute.
The notice of appeal indicates the federal government is appealing the trade court’s ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.
In the document, department officials did not explain their reasons for appealing.
Trump blamed the trade court ruling on “two radical left judges” in comments to reporters.
U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer told Fox Business Network that he expects the trade court’s decision will be reversed.
“They essentially said that Congress passed a law that can’t be used, which we all know in the legal community, that’s not how law should be interpreted,” he said.
The trade court judges voting in the majority “are apparently hell-bent on importing from China.”
The challengers—two dozen states and businesses—argued before the trade court that the tariffs were the Trump administration’s attempt to sidestep a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that struck down the president’s tariffs levied under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.
In his February order imposing the tariffs, Trump relied on Section 122 of the Trade Act, which permits duties to be imposed for as many as 150 days to remedy serious “balance of payments deficits” or combat an imminent depreciation of the U.S. dollar.
The federal government had argued that there was a significant balance-of-payments deficit in the form of a $1.2 trillion annual U.S. goods trade deficit, along with a current account deficit of 4 percent of the gross domestic product.
The trade court’s majority held that Trump had gone beyond what the statute allowed. It found that the tariffs were “invalid” and “unauthorized by law.”
