Trump tariffs can stay in place for now, appeals court rules

US President Donald Trump can keep collecting import taxes for now, an appeals court has said, a day after a trade ruling found the bulk of his global tariffs to be illegal.

A federal appeals court granted a bid from the White House to temporarily suspend the lower court’s order, which ruled that Trump had overstepped his power by imposingthe duties.

Wednesday’s judgement from the US Court of International Trade drew the ire of Trump officials, who called it an example of judicial overreach.

Small businesses and a group of states had challenged the measures, which are at the heart of Trump’s agenda and have shaken up the world economic order.

In its appeal, the Trump administration said the decision issued by the trade court a day earlier had improperly second-guessed the president and threatened to unravel months of hard-fought trade negotiations.

“The political branches, not courts, make foreign policy and chart economic policy,” it said in the filing.

Shortly before Thursday’s tariff reprieve from the appeals court, White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt told a press briefing: “America cannot function if President Trump, or any other president, for that matter, has their sensitive diplomatic or trade negotiations railroaded by activist judges.”

Trump blasted the lower court ruling on Thursday in a social media post, writing: “Hopefully, the Supreme Court will reverse this horrible, Country threatening decision, QUICKLY and DECISIVELY.”

Wednesday’s decision by the little-known trade court in New York would void tariffs imposed by Trump in February on goods from China, Mexico and Canada, which he justified as a move intended to address a fentanyl smuggling.

The lower court’s decision would also dismiss a blanket 10% import tax that Trump unveiled last month on goods from countries around the world, together with higher so-called reciprocal tariffs on trade partners, including the EU and China.

The 1977 law Trump invoked to impose many of the tariffs, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, did not allow for such sweeping levies without input from Congress, the lower court said.

But its ruling did not affect Trump’s tariffs on cars, steel and aluminium, which were implemented under another law.

The White House has suspended or revised many of its duties while trade negotiations grind on.

But the appeals court decision allow the tariffs to be used for now while the case is litigated. The next hearing is on 5 June.

On Thursday, another federal court overseeing a separate tariffs case reached a similar conclusion to the trade court.

Judge Rudolph Contreras found the duties went beyond the president’s authority, but his ruling only applied to a toy company in the case.