We and China will reach a transaction to significantly reduce tariffs, officials say
The US and China have agreed to a contract to reduce mutual tariffs for now and have agreed to a 90-day suspension following consultations in Switzerland.
NEW YORK, May 13 (Reuters) – Five American small businesses asked a US court on Tuesday to suspend President Donald Trump’s “liberation day” tariffs, claiming that the president has stepped over his authority by declaring a national emergency to impose more import taxes than he would sell imports from the US to the United States.
Tuesday’s hearing before a panel of three judges at the New York-based U.S. International Trade Court will mark the first major legal test of Trump’s tariffs.
The lawsuit was filed by the Center for Nonpartisan Free Justice on behalf of five small US companies importing goods from countries targeted by tariffs.
Companies ranging from New York wine and spirit importers to Virginia-based manufacturers of education kits and instruments, say the sudden “liberation day” tariffs imposed by Trump on April 2 are illegal and will undermine the ability to do business.
Jeffrey Schwab, a lawyer representing the plaintiff, said small businesses are harming the threat of increased costs and the “minor changes” that prevent them from planning ahead.
“Our clients don’t have a certainty about what the tariffs will look like at what point, and that’s exactly the problem,” Schwab said. “One person should not have the one-sided authority to impose tariffs on all countries whenever he wishes.”
The Liberty Center for Justice lawsuit is one of seven court challenges against Trump’s tariff policy, the first to seek a ruling that will stop tariffs from moving forward.
The International Trade Court previously rejected the Small Business’s request to temporarily suspend tariffs while the lawsuit progressed, but it immediately scheduled a court hearing on Tuesday to decide whether to control tariffs or impose a long-term suspension.
Trump imposed a new tariff on April 2, saying that the US trade deficit is a “national emergency” that justified a full 10% tariff on all imports, with the US at its biggest trade deficit, particularly the country with China.
Many of these country-specific tariffs were suspended a week later, and on Monday the Trump administration said it was temporarily cutting China’s tariffs while working on a long-term trade deal with Beijing. The two countries agreed over the weekend to cut each other’s tariffs for at least 90 days.
Trump’s on and off tariffs shocked the US market, but he justified them as a way to restore American manufacturing capabilities.
The president’s executive order, announcing tariffs, evoked laws including the International Emergency Economic Force Act.
The Centre for Free Justice said the law would not give the president the power to “unilaterally impose tariffs on the selected country he has chosen.”
The law aims to address “an extraordinary and extraordinary” threats, and decades-long practice of buying more goods than US exports doesn’t qualify as an emergency that causes Ieepa, according to the lawsuit.
The US Department of Justice has argued that Ieepa will give the president a broad power to regulate imports in response to national emergency. The plaintiff’s lawsuit states that it should file a lawsuit because it has not harmed tariffs that have not yet been paid, and that Congress should not be the only private company, but can challenge the national emergency where the president has been declared under the IEEPA.
DOJ did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday.
(Reporting by Dietrich Knauth, Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and David Gregorio
