President Donald Trump is facing a major legal challenge over his sweeping “Liberation Day” tariffs, with a new lawsuit accusing him of unlawfully bypassing Congress to impose broad new trade penalties.
The lawsuit, filed Monday by the Liberty Justice Center, a libertarian public-interest firm, argues that Trump “broke the law” by using emergency powers to unilaterally impose tariffs on imports from dozens of countries. The move stems from Trump’s April 2 announcement, in which he declared a baseline 10 percent tariff on all imports, along with even higher “reciprocal” tariffs aimed at countries he claims have taken advantage of the U.S. in trade deals.
The sudden rollout shook global markets. Stocks and bonds took a hit, and Trump later announced that the higher tariffs would be temporarily reduced to 10 percent for a 90-day window to allow time for negotiations. But legal experts say the real issue is whether he ever had the right to impose them at all.
“Our system is not set up so that one person in the system can have the power to impose taxes across the world economy. That’s not how our constitutional republic works,” said Jeffrey Schwab, senior counsel at the Liberty Justice Center.
At the center of the legal dispute is Trump’s use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), a 1977 law that allows presidents to take economic action during foreign threats or national emergencies. But critics say the law doesn’t give Trump the authority to impose tariffs, and no president has ever used it this way.
“Today it’s tariffs,” Schwab warned. “But could it be something else in the future?”
The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. Court of International Trade, represents five small businesses that say they’ve been directly harmed by the tariffs: VOS Selections, a wine and spirits importer; FishUSA, a sportfishing e-commerce company; MicroKits, a manufacturer of electric toy kits; Genova Pipe, a pipe maker; and Terry Precision Cycling, a women’s cycling apparel brand.
Joining the case is Ilya Somin, a law professor at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School and a prominent constitutional scholar. In a sharply worded statement, Somin didn’t mince words.
“If starting the biggest trade war since the Great Depression based on a law that doesn’t even mention tariffs is not an unconstitutional usurpation of legislative power, I don’t know what is,” he said.
This isn’t the first lawsuit targeting Trump’s latest tariffs. Members of the Blackfeet Nation previously filed suit over the parts of the April 2 announcement that affected trade with Canada. But this case is far broader, challenging Trump’s entire tariff policy as unconstitutional.
It also comes on the heels of another lawsuit filed earlier this month by the New Civil Liberties Alliance, which is targeting additional tariffs Trump placed on Chinese imports.
Together, the lawsuits represent a growing backlash against what critics say is a dangerous power grab. Whether Trump’s tariff strategy survives in court could shape how far future presidents can go in making trade policy without Congress.
