A federal three-judge panel on Wednesday ruled against several of President Donald Trump’s tariffs on international trading partners, ruling that he had exceeded his authority.
The Trump administration quickly moved to appeal in the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.
In their judgment Wednesday, the U.S. Court of International Trade panel said that Trump’s tariffs lacked “any identifiable limits,” and found that the decades-old International Emergency Economic Powers Act, a federal law that Trump cited in many of his executive orders, did not “delegate an unbounded tariff authority to the President.”
“We instead read IEEPA’s provisions to impose meaningful limits on any such authority it confers,” they wrote.
The ruling blocks most of the tariffs Trump has rolled out so far in his second term, including the 10% rate applied to most trading partners and those on China. It also includes fentanyl-related levies on Canada and Mexico.
The panel’s judgment on Wednesday pertained to two lawsuits over Trump’s tariffs — in one a group of states led by Arizona and Oregon had sued over the tariffs, and in another, several small businesses had sued, both arguing that Trump had exceeded his authority.
Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, a Democrat, said in a statement that the tariffs “were poised to devastate our state’s economy.”
“I will continue to fight for affordability for Arizonans and against President Trump’s illegal abuses of power,” she added.
Democratic Attorney General Dan Rayfield of Oregon lauded the ruling as a victory for working families and small businesses.
“President Trump’s sweeping tariffs were unlawful, reckless, and economically devastating. They triggered retaliatory measures, inflated prices on essential goods, and placed an unfair burden on American families, small businesses and manufacturers,” Rayfield said.
White House spokesman Kush Desai said in a statement that trade deficits “have created a national emergency that has decimated American communities, left our workers behind, and weakened our defense industrial base — facts that the court did not dispute.”
“It is not for unelected judges to decide how to properly address a national emergency,” Desai added.
In early evening trading, Nasdaq futures jumped nearly 2% while S&P 500 futures rose about 1.7%.
Dow Jones Industrial Average futures rallied 520 points, or nearly 1.2%. In the weeks since the president rolled out his massive tariff plan on April 2, markets have lost and regained tens of trillions of dollars of wealth — and that’s just counting the U.S. market.
At one point, some of Wall Street’s top banks dialed up their recession predictions to as high as 60%. Since April 2, the 30-stock Dow remains slightly negative, but the broad S&P 500 is up 3.8%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq has risen 8.5% throughout the wild ride. The Russell 2000, which tracks smaller companies, is up 1% since April 2.
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