Court of International Trade

The Justice Department on Thursday faced a tough reception from a panel of 11 federal appeals judges during a hearing on President Trump’s International Emergency Economic Powers Act tariffs, as several raised questions about whether the emergency law authorizes duties at all because it never mentions the term, and some doubted that even a broad interpretation would allow “wholesale rewriting of the tariff schedules.” Yet they also lobbed some pointed questions at attorneys for the state and industry coalitions suing...

The Justice Department is defending a pair of district judges’ decisions declaring that all suits over President Trump’s International Emergency Economic Powers Act tariffs belong at the Court of International Trade, saying appeals of those rulings by state officials and individual plaintiffs are “insubstantial” and ignore the breadth of CIT’s authority. DOJ filed its opening briefs July 28 in two parallel IEEPA suits at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, laying out its latest counterarguments to the...

Judges on the Court of International Trade have rejected -- for now -- an importer’s bid to reinstate the de minimis tariff exemption for low-value Chinese packages, holding that because President Trump eliminated the carveout as part of his “emergency” tariff orders the court already has held unlawful, it would be “redundant” to even consider striking down individual portions of the policy while an appeal of that decision is pending. Thus, CIT says in a July 28 order , the...

Importers aiming to challenge President Trump’s International Emergency Economic Powers Act tariffs outside the Court of International Trade are attacking the administration’s latest argument for sending their case there, saying it represents a “last-ditch effort” after repeated shifts in logic and would produce absurd results. The plaintiffs’ July 23 brief to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit in an IEEPA suit known as Learning Resources, et al., v. Trump marks the latest clash over whether such cases...

A conservative nonprofit that launched one of the first court challenges to President Trump’s International Emergency Economic Powers Act tariffs is suing again on behalf of a different coalition of importers -- a move that a lawyer with the group says is just the first step in a push to seek decisions on their legality from many different courts. The New Civil Liberties Alliance, a conservative legal group that says it focuses on litigation to “protect constitutional freedoms from violations...

The Justice Department is renewing its argument that a Nixon-era court decision upholding short-term emergency tariffs means President Trump’s broader use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act is legal as well, saying that even if current judges disagree with that precedent, Congress adopted it as law when it wrote IEEPA. DOJ’s July 18 brief marks the final step before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit’s oral argument hearing in its IEEPA case, set for the morning...

The Court of International Trade is refusing to reopen a paused suit over President Trump’s use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, saying it would be futile to allow the small-business plaintiffs to argue that their case belongs in a different court because CIT judges have already weighed in on that question. Early on July 18, the trade court issued a three-sentence order keeping in place its stay on an IEEPA challenge known as Emily Ley Paper, et al.,...

The Court of International Trade is considering whether to resume at least one of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act tariff challenges it froze last month amid ongoing appeals in parallel suits after the plaintiffs and Justice Department clashed over whether the stay is streamlining the overall litigation or unnecessarily limiting it. If CIT does choose to lift its stay on the case, known as Emily Ley Paper, et al., v. Trump, it would open a path for the small-business...

Three judges on the Court of International Trade spent much of a Thursday hearing in the challenge to President Trump’s order to end de minimis treatment for low-value Chinese shipments questioning both sides about the limits of his authority to set aside statutory “privileges” in declared emergencies, with few signals of how they might answer that critical question. But during their July 10 oral argument session, members of the panel also sharply criticized the Justice Department’s position that any decision...