The lawsuit overturns temporary tariffs imposed by President Trump after the Supreme Court invalidated earlier tariffs.
Published April 10, 2026
The centerpiece of US President Donald Trump’s economic policy, massive taxes on global imports, is once again under legal attack.
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of International Trade, a specialized court in New York, is hearing oral arguments Friday to overturn the interim tariffs, as well as larger, more sweeping tariffs sought by President Trump after the Supreme Court rejected his override options in February.
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Several U.S. states and small businesses argue that the 10% global import tax imposed by President Trump in February circumvents a Supreme Court ruling that invalidated most previous tariffs.
A group of 24 mostly Democratic-led states and two small businesses sued the Trump administration to halt the new tariffs that went into effect on February 24th.
Oregon attorney Brian Marshall told the judge that the 10% tariffs should be blocked instead of letting them expire at the usual 150-day deadline to prevent President Trump from invoking various laws to keep them in place indefinitely.
“(If) there’s a continuous series where tariffs are always applied, that’s a problem,” Marshall said.
Marshall also said the tariffs were based on an archaic mandate intended to protect against the sudden devaluation of the dollar in the 1970s, when gold reserves stored at Fort Knox could be exchanged for dollars.
He said the authority was aimed at resolving a significant “balance of payments deficit” and that President Trump could not divert the authority to address routine trade deficits.
Tariffs, a central pillar
President Trump has made tariffs a central pillar of his foreign policy in his second term, asserting broad authority to impose tariffs without input from Congress.
The administration said global tariffs are a legitimate and appropriate response to the persistent trade deficit caused by the fact that the United States imports more products than it exports.
“President Trump is lawfully exercising the executive authority vested in him by Congress to address our nation’s balance of payments crisis,” White House Press Secretary Khush Desai said in a statement.
President Trump imposed the new tariffs under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, which allows imports to be subject to tariffs of up to 15% for up to 150 days during periods of “significant and severe balance of payments deficits of the United States” or to prevent an impending dollar depreciation.
States and small businesses argue that the trade law’s tariff powers are intended only to address short-term financial emergencies and that routine trade deficits are inconsistent with the economic definition of a “balance of payments deficit.”
President Trump announced the new tariffs on February 20, the same day the Supreme Court handed him a crushing defeat, striking down the sweeping tariffs he had imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), ruling that the law did not give him the authority he claimed.
No U.S. president before Trump had used IEEPA or Section 122 to impose tariffs. The two lawsuits do not challenge other Trump tariffs made under more traditional legal authority, such as recent tariffs on steel, aluminum and copper imports.
