U.S. court hears challenge to global tariffs
A federal court heard arguments this week in cases challenging the legality of President Trump’s 10% global tariffs, with judges questioning whether routine trade deficits justify the measure under a 1974 law. Multiple outlets covered the oral arguments and noted the litigation could create identifiable event dates for market analysis. (npr.org, opb.org, chicagotribune.com)
A federal trade court spent Friday testing whether President Donald Trump had legal authority to impose a 10 percent tariff on most imports. (opb.org) The hearing was in the United States Court of International Trade in New York on April 10, in lawsuits brought by 24 mostly Democratic-led states and by small businesses including Burlap and Barrel. (politico.com) Judges questioned whether the administration could treat the United States’ long-running trade gap as the kind of “fundamental international payments problem” covered by Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974. (reuters.com) Section 122 is a backup tariff law with hard limits: it lets a president impose a temporary import surcharge of up to 15 percent for no more than 150 days unless Congress extends it. (law.cornell.edu) Trump turned to that law after the Supreme Court, in February 2026, struck down the broader tariffs he had tried to justify under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, an emergency-powers statute. (opb.org) The White House proclamation signed on February 20 said the new surcharge would take effect on February 24 and argued that “large and serious” United States balance-of-payments deficits required import restrictions. (whitehouse.gov) Lawyers for the states and businesses told the panel that Section 122 was written for currency and payments crises, not for ordinary trade deficits that the United States has run for decades. (npr.org) Government lawyers argued the statute gives the president room to act when senior officials conclude the country faces a serious external imbalance, and they asked the court to leave the tariffs in place. (pbs.org) The case also matters because Section 122 tariffs expire on their own after 150 days without an act of Congress, which gives the court fight a clear clock as importers, states, and investors track the next dates. (federalregister.gov) The trade court moved quickly in Trump’s earlier tariff cases, and Friday’s argument put the same basic question back in front of judges: how far a president can go alone when trade policy runs into statutory limits. (local10.com)
