Plaintiffs allege third legal challenge to tariff authority
Two small businesses filed a lawsuit Friday challenging President Donald Trump’s latest round of tariffs, which took effect on imports from more than 80 countries, arguing the administration overstepped its legal authority under a trade law intended to combat forced labor.
Burlap and Barrel, a New York spice company, and Collective Horology, a California watch store, brought the case. The plaintiffs are represented by the Liberty Justice Center, a legal nonprofit that won a Supreme Court case against the president’s previous round of global tariffs earlier this year. Since that loss, the administration has sought other legal authorities to support its tariff policy and bypass congressional approval, according to the source.
The new tariffs impose levies of 10% to 12.5% on goods from more than 80 countries, justified under a provision to prevent imports made with forced labor from entering the United States.
“Forced labor is morally indefensible, but an important objective does not give the government permission to ignore the law,” said Sara Albrecht, CEO of the Liberty Justice Center, in a statement. “The administration allowed one global tariff to expire and immediately replaced it with another under a different statute. Changing the statute doesn’t change the law. Every tariff authority has limits, and every administration must respect them.”
In the lawsuit, the plaintiffs said the U.S. Trade Representative “failed to provide a reasoned, record-based explanation for its determinations.”
“This is the third time the administration has attempted to impose its global tariff policy without following the statutory limits,” said Jeffrey Schwab, senior counsel and director of litigation at the Liberty Justice Center, in a statement. “Section 301 is a targeted, country-specific and practice-specific remedial authority,” Schwab said. “It is not a freestanding authorization to tax substantially all imports from substantially all countries at preestablished rates.”