A federal appeals court on Thursday temporarily agreed to preserve many of President Trump’s sweeping tariffs on China and other U.S. trading partners. The move pauses an earlier decision by a separate court that would have forced the White House to wind down duties deemed to be illegal.
The new order, by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, granted the pause on an administrative basis. That decision bought time for the panel’s judges to consider the government’s ask for a longer delay, as the administration pursues a ruling that would safeguard one of its most potent tools in the president’s global trade war.
Since taking office, Mr. Trump has relied on a federal emergency powers law as a form of political leverage, hoping to use sky-high duties — or the mere threat of them — to force other governments to make trade concessions.
On Wednesday, the U.S. Court of International Trade dealt an early blow to that strategy. The bipartisan panel of judges, one of whom had been appointed by Mr. Trump, ruled that the law did not grant the president “unbounded authority” to impose tariffs on nearly every country, as Mr. Trump had sought. As a result, the president’s tariffs were declared illegal, and the court ordered a halt to their collection within the next 10 days.
The administration quickly asked the trade court to pause any enforcement of its order as it embarked on an appeal at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, where it also sought emergency relief.
In a filing submitted Thursday, the Justice Department said the new order invalidating its claims of sweeping trade powers was “rife with legal error.” The government warned it would hamstring Mr. Trump’s efforts “to eliminate our exploding trade deficit and reorient the global economy on an equal footing.”
The appeals court ultimately intervened, and while it did not rule directly on the government’s request or the merits of Mr. Trump’s tariffs, the panel still temporarily spared the administration from having to halt the levies it has used as political leverage in dozens of trade negotiations.
In effect, it means that Mr. Trump can, for now, maintain many of the tariffs he has imposed on China, Canada and Mexico and preserve the threat of “reciprocal” rates, which he announced on most nations and then suspended in early April. But it is not the final word in the legal saga, which is expected to land at the Supreme Court.
“The Supreme Court must put an end to this for the sake of our Constitution and our country,” said Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, who opened her Thursday briefing by attacking judges for having “brazenly abused their judicial power.”
Just before she spoke, a federal judge in a separate case ordered another, temporary halt to many of Mr. Trump’s tariffs, ruling in favor of an educational toy company in Illinois, whose lawyers told the court it was harmed by Mr. Trump’s actions.
Rudolph Contreras, the district judge presiding in the case, concluded that the economic powers law “is not a law providing for tariffs,” though he stayed the start of his preliminary injunction for the next 14 days.
The string of new court defeats has reinforced a palpable sense of worry across the administration. Some of Mr. Trump’s top advisers had previously told judges hearing the cases that an adverse decision could hamstring their negotiations. Top White House aides said in April that it planned to reach 90 deals in 90 days, with a deadline of mid-July, and the administration appears far from reaching its goal.
“If this court limits that authority, foreign counterparts will have reduced incentives to reach meaningful agreements — resulting in the status quo that led to the national emergency,” Howard Lutnick, the secretary of commerce, said in a declaration filed with the trade court last week.
On Thursday morning, Kevin Hassett, the director of the White House National Economic Council, downplayed the consequences of the court ruling, casting it as one of a few “little hiccups here and there.” He said that the president had other legal tools to impose tariffs outside the economic emergency law, though he signaled that the administration was “not planning to pursue those right now.”
“It’s certainly not going to affect the negotiations. Because, in the end, people know President Trump is 100 percent serious, and they also have seen President Trump always wins,” he said.
And yet, the president’s early court defeat left the future of his global trade war in great doubt.
Around the world, foreign leaders scrambled to decipher the decision and how it might affect their talks with the United States. More than a dozen countries are involved in active talks with the administration, which is demanding that other nations lower their taxes and restrictions on U.S.-made goods in exchange for a reduction in tariffs.
It was only last week that Mr. Trump brandished the threat of tariffs in his standoff with the European Union, warning that he would impose a 50 percent rate on its exports to the United States unless the two sides struck a deal. Officials from the regional bloc had been in Washington in recent days as they raced to strike a bargain with Mr. Trump and stave off new duties.
“In the extreme short run, it certainly derails the negotiations,” said William Reinsch, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “Why would countries negotiate to stave off a threat that has now been ruled illegal?”
Still, Mr. Reinsch said that appeals would lead to “a lot of confusion.” He said the administration would probably maintain that negotiations are still on and countries that are in Washington would likely continue talks for the time being.
On Wall Street, investors initially reacted warmly to the news, sending markets higher before they fell again amid weeks of whiplash over the president’s aggressive use of tariffs. By midmorning, the S&P 500 had edged up by nearly half a percentage point, before retreating, as analysts tried to decipher the effects of the court’s action on tariff rates.
None of the lawsuits that have been decided against the president implicate Mr. Trump’s other tariffs, which are issued under separate legal authorities. They include his levies on steel, aluminum and cars, as well as other tariffs that the president has threatened on pharmaceuticals, semiconductors and other critical products.
Taken together, the nation’s effective tariff rate would fall to 7 percent from 18 percent, if Mr. Trump cannot reinstate his steepest duties, according to Ernie Tedeschi, the director of economics at the Budget Lab at Yale. That would still be the highest tariff rate since 1969.
While Mr. Tedeschi described it as a “major dial down” on trade, he said the remaining tariffs could still shrink the rate of the nation’s economic growth and raise prices for consumers.
“That’s still a substantial impact,” he said.
Ana Swanson contributed reporting.
Tony Romm is a reporter covering economic policy and the Trump administration for The Times, based in Washington.
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