Donald Trump: US court declares many tariffs to be void

Legal damper for the US President: A US Court of Appeal has declared a large part of the tariffs imposed by Donald Trump as illegal and thus confirmed a decision of the first instance. On Friday (local time), the Federal Court of Appeal said that Trump exceeded its powers with the imposition of the tariffs. However, the judges initially let the tariffs come into force until mid -October. The case was expected to end up in front of the Supreme Court.

Trump had referred to the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) when the tariffs against trading partners around the world were imposed. In the decision of Friday, with regard to the emergency law, the law said that the president gives the president far -reaching powers in order to react to a declared national emergency with a number of measures, but none of these measures expressly encompasses the authorization, tariffs, taxes or the like. “

Trump immediately rejected the decision. “All tariffs remain in force,” he wrote in his online service Truth Social. The judges had “wrongly decided that our tariffs should be abolished, but they know that the United States will end up in the end,” said Truth Social on his platform.

“With the help of the United States’s Supreme Court, we will now use them for the benefit of our country,” emphasized the President. In doing so, he indicated that he would call the Supreme Court dominated by conservative judges.

The judges had made an “extremely partisan” decision, the president emphasized. A lifting of the tariffs would be “an absolute disaster” for the United States and would “destroy” the country.

A judgment on the cancellation of the tariffs would be a hard blow for the president who used tariffs as an economic policy instrument. It could also have an impact on trade agreements that Trump has achieved in the customs dispute with some trading partners, such as the EU. The judgment of the Court of Appeal does not apply to industry-specific tariffs such as the surcharges on steel and auto imports.

A few hours before the publication of the court decision, members of the Trump government had warned of such a step. To declare the tariff illegally “would endanger the strategic interests of the United States at home and abroad and probably lead to retaliation measures and to terminate agreed agreements by foreign trading partners,” said Minister of Commerce Howard Lutnick. Finance Minister Scott Bessent believed that the US would put a suspension of the tariffs in a “diplomatic embarrassing and dangerous situation”.

The democratic governor of California, Gavin Newsom, said after the court decision that Trump was “the largest loser in the United States” and regretted that the US citizens were the suffering of his “failed economic policy”. Newsom, which ambitions are said about to the presidency, is one of Trump’s sharpest critics.

After his return to the White House, Trump had imposed punitive tariffs of at least ten percent against numerous states in April and thereby triggered disputes with trading partners all over the world. He then imposed higher customs sets against many countries. For goods from the EU, a general duty rate of 15 percent came into force on August 7. The United States raises a 50 percent customs set on steel and aluminum products. The United States imposed 50 percent tariffs against India and Brazil.

In May, a commercial court in New York declared the customs policy of the US President to be unlawful and blocked most of the surcharges he imposed. The Trump government made an appeal to which the tariffs were temporarily put back into force.

If the tariffs are ultimately declared unlawful, companies could request compensation.