Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick called a U.S. Court of International Trade ruling that blocked President Trump’s global tariffs “silly” and said the president will ultimately prevail with his tariff agenda.
“Well, think about how silly that is, right? So Congress gives the president, under this IEEPA [International Emergency Economic Powers Act] authority, the ability to take on other countries who are creating a national emergency, and the $1.2 trillion trade deficit and all the underlying implications of that is a national emergency,” Mr. Lutnick said on “Fox News Sunday.”
“It’s gutting our manufacturing base. The president takes that on, and Congress lets him do it specifically, does not vote to take it away, calls a vote and says he can keep it. So what’s going to happen is we’re going to take that up to higher courts. The president is going to win, like he always does, but rest assured, tariffs are not going away,” he said.
Mr. Lutnick said Mr. Trump has many other authorities that even in the “weird and unusual circumstance where this was taken away, we just bring on another or another or another.”
The U.S. Court of International Trade ruled last week that Mr. Trump’s global tariffs and his particular tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China over drug trafficking concerns stretched presidential powers beyond their breaking point.
The trade court ruled that the 1970s-era law Mr. Trump used doesn’t give the president the expansive powers he is claiming to “impose unlimited tariffs on goods from nearly every country in the world.”
The three-judge panel said even if the law could be read that broadly, the power to lay duties lies with Congress, and it cannot give that power away in full to the president.
That, the judges said, would violate the nondelegation and major questions doctrines, which protect Congress’ ability to control big decisions in areas entrusted to it by the founders.
A second court, the federal court in Washington, also issued a ruling finding the president went too far, but that judge applied his ruling only to the two toy companies that had sued in his courtroom.
More recently, Mr. Trump picked up a temporary victory when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit granted an administrative stay. This means everything is on hold for at least a short time while the court takes initial stock of the case.
