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    Court Tariffs Ruling Upends Trump’s Trade Strategy

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    The administration immediately petitioned a court to allow the United States to continue imposing stiff tariffs.One day after a federal court declared many of his tariffs to be illegal, President Trump and his top aides on Thursday rushed to resuscitate the centerpiece of the administration’s trade agenda, seeking to restore their ability to use the threat of eye-watering import taxes to force other nations into submission.Shortly after the ruling, the administration petitioned a court to allow it to continue imposing its tariffs, reflecting a persistent fear throughout the White House that a defeat could severely undercut its capacity to wage a global trade war.Since taking office, Mr. Trump had relied on a federal emergency powers law as a form of political leverage, hoping to use sky-high duties — or just the mere threat of them — to force other governments to make trade concessions to the United States.But the little-known and highly specialized U.S. Court of International Trade dealt an early yet significant blow to that strategy late Wednesday. The bipartisan panel of judges, one of whom had been appointed by Mr. Trump, ruled that the law did not grant the president “unbounded authority” to impose tariffs on nearly every country, as Mr. Trump had sought.The Trump administration quickly petitioned the court to pause any enforcement of its order as it pursues an appeal at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. If judges ultimately grant the requested stay, Mr. Trump could, for now, maintain many of the tariffs he has imposed on China, Canada and Mexico and preserve the threat of “reciprocal” rates, which he announced on most nations and then suspended in early April.“I’m sure, when we appeal, this decision will be overturned,” Kevin Hassett, the director of the White House National Economic Council, said in an appearance Thursday on Fox Business.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      12 States Sue Trump Over His Tariffs

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      A dozen states, most of them led by Democrats, sued President Trump over his tariffs on Wednesday, arguing that he has no power to “arbitrarily impose tariffs as he has done here.”Contending that only Congress has the power to legislate tariffs, the states are asking the court to block the Trump administration from enforcing what they said were unlawful tariffs.“These edicts reflect a national trade policy that now hinges on the president’s whims rather than the sound exercise of his lawful authority,” said the lawsuit, filed by the states’ attorneys general in the U.S. Court of International Trade.The states, including New York, Illinois and Oregon, are the latest parties to take the Trump administration to court over the tariffs. Their case comes after California filed its own lawsuit last week, in which Gov. Gavin Newsom and the state attorney general accused the administration of escalating a trade war that has caused “immediate and irreparable harm” to that state’s economy.Officials and businesses from Oregon, the lead plaintiff in the suit filed Wednesday, have also expressed concerns about the vulnerability of the state’s trade-dependent economy, as well as its sportswear industry, as a result of the tariffs.“When a president pushes an unlawful policy that drives up prices at the grocery store and spikes utility bills, we don’t have the luxury of standing by,” said Dan Rayfield, Oregon’s attorney general, in a statement. “These tariffs hit every corner of our lives — from the checkout line to the doctor’s office — and we have a responsibility to push back.”Asked about the latest lawsuit, Kush Desai, a White House spokesman, called it a “witch hunt” by Democrats against Mr. Trump. “The Trump administration remains committed to using its full legal authority to confront the distinct national emergencies our country is currently facing,” he said, “both the scourge of illegal migration and fentanyl flows across our border and the exploding annual U.S. goods trade deficit.”The other states in the suit are Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico and Vermont. All of the states have Democratic attorneys general, though Nevada and Vermont have Republican governors.Mr. Trump’s tariffs have shocked and upended the global trade industry. He set a 145 percent tariff on goods from China, 25 percent on Canada, and 10 percent on almost all imports from most other countries.The moves have drawn legal challenges from other entities as well, including two members of the Blackfeet Nation, who filed a federal lawsuit in Montana over the tariffs on Canada, saying they violated tribal treaty rights. Legal groups like the Liberty Justice Center and the New Civil Liberties Alliance have also sued. “I’m happy that Oregon and the other states are joining us in this fight,” said Ilya Somin, a law professor at George Mason University, who is working on the Liberty Justice Center’s lawsuit. More