Shortly after a federal trade court declared many of President Trump’s tariffs to be illegal, Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary, took to television to brush aside the setback.
“It cost us a week, maybe,” Mr. Lutnick said this month on Fox News, noting that other countries remained eager to strike new deals despite tariffs being in legal jeopardy.
“Everybody came right back to the table,” he added.
With the fate of the president’s tariffs hanging in the balance, the Trump administration has tried to project dueling narratives. Top aides have insisted publicly that their negotiations remain unharmed, even as some of those same officials have pleaded with the court to spare Mr. Trump from reputational damage on the global stage.
The administration will face two crucial tests on Monday. The government is scheduled to submit a new legal brief to a federal appeals court outlining why the tariffs should not go away, while Mr. Lutnick and other close Trump advisers meet with their Chinese counterparts in London to hammer out new trade terms.
The court could factor in “any sort of public statements the administration makes” as it decides whether to preserve existing tariffs as the case plays out, said Ted Murphy, a co-leader of the trade practice at the law firm Sidley Austin.
While Mr. Murphy said it remained to be seen how judges would view the government’s recent bullishness, he said that a decision that invalidated the president’s tariffs could “weaken the U.S. position” abroad.
Mr. Trump’s top aides have long maintained that they possess a range of authorities they can use to issue tariffs and reorient global trade. But they have also tried to impress on federal judges that any limitation to those powers could severely undercut the president.
“Allies and adversaries alike monitor U.S. courts for signs of constraints on presidential power,” Mr. Lutnick warned in a sworn filing with a lower court in late May.
Jamieson Greer, the U.S. trade representative, put it more bluntly. A decision that halted tariffs, he said in the same filing, “would create a foreign policy disaster scenario.”
One week later, Mr. Greer projected a more confident tone on CNBC.
“All the other countries I’m dealing with in negotiations are treating this as just kind of a bump in the road rather than any fundamental change,” he said.
Spokespeople for the White House, the Commerce Department and the U.S. trade representative did not respond to requests for comment.
The legal wrangling carries great stakes for Mr. Trump, who has waged his global trade war in an effort to increase domestic manufacturing, raise trillions of dollars in new revenue and force other countries to strike beneficial trade agreements with the United States.
To issue those duties swiftly, and without limit, the president has relied extensively on a 1970s law known as the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which is primarily used to institute embargoes and sanctions. Mr. Trump said that a number of crises — such as the nation’s trade deficit and the flow of fentanyl into the United States — justified his novel application of the statute, which does not mention the word tariff explicitly.
A group of small businesses and a coalition of states each sued over the tariffs in April at the Court of International Trade, which rejected the Trump administration’s interpretation of the law one month later. The panel of judges found that Mr. Trump did not have “unbounded authority” to issue such expansive tariffs under the emergency law, and they ordered Mr. Trump to unwind the duties.
The government quickly appealed. The following day, an appeals court issued a temporary stay that left the tariffs intact while the court begins to consider the government’s request for a longer-term pause, as well as the fuller merits of the case.
Even before the appeals court could begin to parse the legal arguments, the White House signaled that it planned to take the matter to the Supreme Court if necessary.
The legal challenge still threatened to upend Mr. Trump’s efforts to strike what his aides once promised would be 90 deals in 90 days. For now, the president plans to reinstate his expansive “reciprocal” tariffs targeting every major U.S. trading partner in July. The United States has managed to ink only one deal, with Britain, while other agreements remain elusive.
On Monday, Mr. Lutnick and Mr. Greer are expected to be part of a negotiating team holding fresh talks with their Chinese counterparts. The discussions come as diplomatic and trade tensions between the countries have worsened in recent weeks as a temporary truce they brokered last month appeared to be falling part.
In multiple courtrooms, the administration has repeatedly emphasized the precarious nature of its many trade talks, as the government tries to persuade judges to keep the tariffs in place. But federal officials continue to do so while simultaneously trying to project an air of strength.
Last month, Kevin Hassett, the director of the White House National Economic Council, described the court battle as one of a few “little hiccups here or there.” Peter Navarro, a senior adviser to the president on trade, said that same day he had continued to field phone calls from foreign leaders who acknowledged “that court decision is not going to stop you.”
And Mr. Lutnick joined other aides in insisting that Mr. Trump could deftly navigate any legal setbacks, tapping “another or another or another” presidential authority to issue tariffs. But the administration has said those powers are more limited, and time consuming, than the emergency economic law that Mr. Trump had wielded originally.
Still, Dan Rayfield, the attorney general of Oregon, which is leading the group of states suing over tariffs, said the views of administration officials had contradicted their argument that they “need this stay because it’s going to cause us irreparable harm.”
The states’ lawsuit has been consolidated with a related case filed by a set of small businesses. Jeffrey Schwab, the interim director of litigation at the Liberty Justice Center, which is representing those plaintiffs, said some of the government’s public statements threatened to undercut legal arguments.
“One of the things they’ve got to show to get a stay is that there is some harm to them,” he said. “If they’re publicly saying we don’t need this specific power because we have other alternatives, then that indicates they’re not really harmed.”
Tony Romm is a reporter covering economic policy and the Trump administration for The Times, based in Washington.
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