An appeals court on Thursday stayed the ruling of the U.S. Court of International Trade that blocked President Donald Trump’s Liberation Day tariffs, meaning the tariffs are back in effect.
The U.S. Court of International Trade issued an injunction on Wednesday night, ruling that President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs are illegal. The White House filed a motion to stay the ruling, and the tariffs were reinstated Thursday afternoon, as CNBC noted, shortly after the White House slammed the ruling.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said hours before the stay that the three judges on the trade court “brazenly abused their judicial power to usurp the authority of President Trump, to stop him from carrying out the mandate that the American people gave him.”
Leavitt said that the mechanism to terminate a president’s use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) exists within Congress, and the matter has already been adjudicated:
These judges failed to acknowledge that the President of the United States has core foreign affairs powers and authority given to him by Congress to protect the United States economy and national security. Congress had created the National Emergency Act to provide the congressional framework to strike down improper IEEPA use, and any questions over whether President Trump improperly imposed these IEEPA tariffs were already adjudicated in Congress following Liberation Day. Congress firmly rejected an effort led by Senator Rand Paul and Democrats to terminate the president’s reciprocal tariffs.
She stressed that “The courts should have no role here.”
This is just the latest in a string of examples where federal judges have overruled Trump and imposed nationwide injunctions, which Leavitt categorized as “dangerous.”
“There is a troubling and dangerous trend of unelected judges inserting themselves into the presidential decision-making process,” she said. “America cannot function if President Trump, or any other president, for that matter, has their sensitive diplomatic or trade negotiations railroaded by activist judges.”
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