The little-known Court of International Trade in Manhattan ignited a process that may bring the President’s so-called Liberation Day crashing down around his ears. The judges ruled that when Trump took to the Rose Garden of the White House on 2 April and revealed the “reciprocal” tariffs that he was imposing on nations worldwide, he acted illegally.
To put the judges’ ruling another way: America is not a dictatorship.
Trump announced his ‘reciprocal’ tariffs on 2 April (Photo: Brendan Smialowski / AFP via Getty Images)
The stage is now set for a legal showdown with enormous implications for Trump’s entire economic strategy, and also for America’s trading partners worldwide. Trump has repeatedly promised Americans that his tariffs are raking in untold billions in revenues from nations that have “ripped America off”. Aboard Air Force One ahead of his “Liberation Day” announcement he insisted that “we’re going to become so rich, you’re not going to know where to spend all that money”. He has also repeatedly posited a future when he would be able to scrap federal income tax altogether, and fund the government entirely from tariff revenues.
The legal setback also has enormous implications for Trump’s broader national security policies. So many of them are now firmly rooted in the soil of his trade policy, with tariffs being used as a blunt instrument to force the country’s allies, partners and competitors to bend to his will.
Several nations have even circumvented some of their own regulations to try and curry trading favour with Trump, including Vietnam which last week fast-tracked permission for Trump’s business empire to build a new golf complex just outside Hanoi in an effort to secure alleviation of 46 per cent “reciprocal” tariffs slapped on all its exports to the USA.
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While the White House was stunned by the court’s ruling, Trump is known to covet the standoff with the judiciary that is sure to follow. He has repeatedly argued that judges should have no power to stop him from enacting all the policies that he pledged on the campaign trail. While it has taken the courts almost two months to catch up with his “Liberation Day” actions, his White House lawyers will have been under misapprehension about the possibility of legal challenges.
The court ruling also upends ongoing trade talks with other partners, including the EU, which Trump has claimed was “formed in order to screw the United States”. The Chinese government will also be paying very close attention to the judgment, given that Beijing remains on the receiving end of the most punitive tariffs that the President imposed on 2 April.
On the issue of tariffs at least, he is beginning to look like a busted flush.
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