Donald Trump has a graphic on new prices while speaking during a commercial announcement event in the … More
A new trial aims to end the radical prices of the Trump administration by arguing that the use of emergency powers by the president is illegal. When Donald Trump signed an order to impose radical prices on the countries of the world, he did not use traditional commercial law. Instead, Trump claimed the authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers. However, no president has ever used this law to impose prices. If the new trial or other legal actions succeed, the massive prices that the Trump administration has imposed on imports in the world could largely disappear and relieve consumers, businesses and investors.
Trump’s prices unleash financial carnage at Wall Street
On April 2, 2025, Donald Trump promulgated tariff levels that guaranteed consumers and American companies would pay higher prices for many products and the intermediate goods used to make products. Investors provided that prices would harm the company’s profits and lead to slower growth in the United States and elsewhere.
“President Trump installed a wall between the American economy and the rest of the world, and the market has landed. And then the market landed again,” reported the Wall Street Journal. “The message of the epic rout of Wall Street, which destroyed 6.6 billions of dollars of market value: there is nowhere where to hide from the steep prices of Trump on goods imported from almost all the corners of the planet.”
Among the first countries to retaliate, there was China. The Chinese government has announced higher prices on American products, including agricultural products. This will probably lead the Trump administration to solve a political problem, as it did in 2020, spending billions of dollars in taxpayers to compensate American farmers through the Commodity Credit Corporation. The Congress did not create the CCC for this purpose.
Trump prices authorized by an unprecedented use of the Act on Emergency Powers
When Donald Trump imposed prices on almost all countries, he signed an executive decree using a new authority: “by the authority granted in me as president by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including the International Economic Powder Law … I, Donald J. Trump. Remove salaries and interior consumption, as indicated by the annual deficits of important and persistent annual American products, constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to national security and the economy of the United States. »»
Article 1701 of the International Emergency Economic Powers Stipulates: “Any authority granted to the President
Although the status notes, “the authorities granted to the President … can only be exercised to deal with an unusual and extraordinary threat to which a national emergency has been declared for the purpose of this chapter and cannot be exercised for other purposes”, it gives the president the discretion to define “a national emergency” and “an unusual and extraordinary threat”.
The Trump administration used the IEPA because it provides more unilateral authority to the President to impose prices than US trade permits.
In an aerial view, shipping containers are stacked on a quay at the port of Oakland on December 9, … More
The trial maintains that Trump’s prices are unconstitutional
On April 3, 2025, the New Civil Liberties Alliance filed a complaint for injunctive and declaratory relief contesting the use by the Trump administration of the International Law on Economic Powers. The trial is on behalf of simplified, a company based in Pensacola which imports goods from China and plans to pay higher rates due to the president’s decree.
“Presidents can only impose prices when the congress grants authorization, which it did in carefully drawn commercial laws,” according to the complaint. Laws limit the conditions and scope of prices. “President Trump tries to get around these constraints by invoking the ieepa. But in the history of almost 50 years of the IEEPA, no previous president used it to impose prices. Which is not surprising, because the status does not even mention the prices, and it says nothing else that suggests it authorizes the presidents to tax American citizens. ”
The complaint provides four main reasons for which the recent pricing actions of the president using the international law on economic powers of emergency are illegal.
First, “(the ieepa does not authorize a president to impose prices. The basic tools of statutory construction dictate this conclusion.” The complaint supports: “Because executive decrees present a question of” great economic and political importance “, the doctrine of major questions obliges the president to show that the ieep ‘` `clearly’ ‘authorizes him.
Second, “the decrees in China are Ultra Vires Because the president does not – and cannot make the requirement of the ieepa that he shows that the prices are “necessary” to meet the declared emergency of illegal opioids “.
Thirdly, “If the ieepa allows decrees in China, this law violates non -delegated doctrine because it has no intelligible principle which forces the authority of a president. In this case, the ieepa is unconstitutional because it delegates the prerogative of the congress to impose and regulate trade with foreign countries. ”
Fourth, “the resulting modifications made to the HTSUS (harmonized tariff calendar of the United States) violate the law on administrative procedure because they are contrary to the law.”
Kathleen Claussen, professor of law at the University of Georgetown, said on the Trade negotiations Podcast, “The courts may not be satisfied with the great scope of the emergency, that this is so wide. It’s so large. This is clearly not what the congress wanted by adopting the statutes on which the president is based now. ” She notes that the ieepa does not contain the word “price”. Claussen added: “And therefore perhaps, this use of prices, a court will think has gone too far. But again, on the whole, so far, what we have seen is a lot of deference from the courts on these kinds of questions. ”
Donald B. Cameron, Jr., principal lawyer for the practice of international trade in Morris, Manning and Martin, believes that the trial has merit. “He says that the administration has concocted a reason to invoke the provision, and if this is legal, then the executive, and not the congress, controls the prices because the reason is composed transparently.” He declared that the new Civil Liberties alliance was making a good statutory argument to explain why the status does not allow, at first glance, prices as a remedy. “It will be interesting to see what the court will do, but it’s a good complaint.”
Trade experts note that Congress could retaliate its authority over the prices, even if little think that many Republicans would strengthen Donald Trump on such a central issue to his presidency. The complaint directly concerns the prices on the goods of China. In the event of success, the trial or others could extend to treat the prices taken from the goods of other countries using the international law on economic powers.
