The lawsuit alleges that President Trump bypassed Congress and abused a century-old law to impose steep tariffs on Canadian imports.
U.S. food importers are suing President Donald Trump over a 50% tariff on Canadian products, arguing that he lacks the legal authority to impose significant tariffs without Congressional approval.
Gellert Global Group, a New Jersey-based company that imports Canadian cheese, filed the lawsuit Tuesday in the U.S. Court of International Trade in New York.
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The company says the tariffs have increased costs and disrupted relationships with suppliers on both sides of the border. Gellert paid more than $520,000 in customs duties between September 16 and October 11, according to the complaint.
“For generations, Gellert Global Group has built trusted relationships with suppliers, customers and partners across the food industry,” Thomas Gellert, co-CEO of the company, said in a press release. “These tariffs disrupt these relationships overnight, creating costs and uncertainty that ripple throughout the supply chain.”
The lawsuit challenges President Trump’s decision to use Depression-era laws to impose tariffs on a wide range of Canadian products, including dairy products, furniture, clothing and wine.
President Trump first imposed 50% tariffs in the summer, accusing Canada of discriminating against American-made cars, alcohol and dairy products. He expanded the measure in September to add more products in response to Canada’s retaliatory tariffs.
The lawsuit argues that the law does not apply to Canadian policies that the Trump administration claims are discriminatory because two of them “arose in response to the President’s own tariffs, and the third relates to Canada’s dairy policy under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA).”
He also questions why Canadian cheese is being taxed in a dispute over alcohol and cars.
“No president should have the power to pull a dormant statute off the shelf and use it to impose sweeping tariffs or import bans without the restrictions Congress requires,” said Sarah Albrecht, president and CEO of the nonprofit law group Liberty Justice Center, which filed the lawsuit on Gellert’s behalf.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment, according to Reuters.
At the center of the case is Section 338 of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930, which allows the president to impose tariffs of up to 50% on imports from countries found to discriminate against U.S. companies.
The provision had never been used until President Trump invoked it this year.
In the lawsuit, Gellert argues that new laws passed by Congress since then, such as Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, require investigations, public comment, and other safeguards that the Trump administration has circumvented, and that they override Section 338.
“The administration cannot ignore these protections by reaching into a 1930 law that no president has ever used to impose tariffs,” said Jeffrey Schwab, senior counsel and litigation director at the Liberty Justice Center.
The lawsuit further argues that even if President Trump were allowed to apply the old law, he would not have met requirements such as waiting 30 days before being able to collect duties on new products added to the list.
According to the complaint, the administration waited just seven days to begin collecting cheese duties in September.
Mr. Gellert is asking the court to declare the tariffs illegal, stop collecting them, and order affected importers to pay refunds with interest.
The lawsuit is the fourth major legal challenge to President Trump’s tariffs.
In February, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down most of the tariffs imposed in 2025, and a subsequent trade court ruled against imposing a temporary 10% tariff globally. Another challenge to tariffs imposed over alleged forced labor in international trade is still pending.
