A federal appeals court has temporarily restored President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariff orders, including a 10% base levy on nearly all U.S. imports, just one day after a trade court struck them down as an overreach of presidential emergency powers, CBS News reported May 29.
In a ruling issued May 28 by the U.S. Court of International Trade, a bipartisan panel of three judges found that President Trump had overstepped authority granted to him by the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, a law that does not explicitly allow for the imposition of tariffs and is typically used for trade embargoes and sanctions, according to a New York Times report.
Before President Trump took office, no president had ever attempted to invoke the IEEPA to impose tariffs. He used the statute to announce and later suspend tariffs on many countries, including levies on Canadian and Mexican goods, citing their alleged roles in fentanyl trafficking.
Here are six notes:
- The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued an administrative stay, halting the trade court’s injunction and allowing the Trump administration’s tariffs to remain in place for now, while the court reviews the government’s appeal.
- The Trump administration had filed its intent to appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit and also sought an emergency stay of the ruling. The court gave the executive branch up to 10 days to begin the bureaucratic process of ending the blocked tariffs.
- The ruling applied only to tariffs issued under IEEPA and does not affect those that have been enacted under a legal framework, such as Section 232 on steel, aluminum and cars or Section 301 primarily targeting pharmaceuticals, semiconductors and other products.
In early April, President Trump imposed a 10% baseline tariff on all U.S. imports as part of his “Liberation Day” trade initiative. Though dozens of countries were expected to face steeper tariffs, he later announced a 90-day pause to allow for negotiations. President Trump, however, raised the tariff on Chinese imports to 125% citing the country’s “lack of respect” for global markets.
The U.S. and China issued a joint statement May 12, agreeing to cut the additional tariffs to 10% for 90 days, with the levy on Chinese goods totaling 30%.
- The decision was a victory for businesses and states that filed lawsuits, arguing President Trump misused emergency powers. A coalition of 12 states, led by Oregon, asked the court to issue a permanent injunction that would block Trump tariffs, arguing that the trade deficit used to justify the emergency action was decades in the making and did not constitute a crisis.
- White House spokesperson Kush Desai criticized the trade court’s decision, stating that unfair trade practices had “decimated American communities, left our workers behind and weakened our defense industrial base — facts that the court did not dispute.”
- While the appeals court’s stay reinstates the tariffs temporarily, the legal outcome remains uncertain as plaintiffs have until June 5 to respond. The Justice Department warned that without interim relief, it would ask the Supreme Court to intervene. The administration argued that the tariffs are essential tools for economic and national security.
