Tariff rulings inject new uncertainty, cast doubt on use of 1977 law

WASHINGTON — A head-spinning series of court rulings over President Donald Trump’s signature tariffs left Washington, Wall Street and much of the world trying to discern the future of U.S. trade policy Thursday, including whether import taxes would fall meaningfully or if the administration would get the legal green light to upend the global trading system.

Less than 24 hours after the U.S. Court of International Trade blocked steep tariffs that Trump had imposed on trading partners using emergency powers, a separate court temporarily paused that decision, sowing even more chaos on a day filled with economic uncertainty.

The extent to which the legal wrangling may ultimately lower tariffs hinges on the next steps from the Trump administration and a series of judges who will further parse the president’s exact powers. Those decisions carry great consequences for the entire global economy, not to mention American consumers and businesses, who could face higher prices if Trump is allowed to proceed with his aggressive tariff strategy.

At the heart of the fight is the president’s use of a decades-old economic emergency law to impose some of his most eye-watering duties, including the minimum 10% levy he has placed on nearly every U.S. trading partner. On Wednesday, a panel of judges on the nation’s leading trade court found Trump had misapplied the law, ruling that Congress did not grant him “unbounded authority” to wage a global trade war.

The decision would have forced the Trump administration to unwind many of the president’s steep tariffs over the next 10 days, but the government quickly petitioned a federal appeals court to intervene. It asked a panel of judges to hold that order at bay while it weighed the administration’s fuller arguments that its tariffs were lawful.

The appeals court ultimately issued a temporary, administrative pause Thursday afternoon that allowed the government to keep its tariffs in place. The move bought time for judges to begin evaluating the legal core of the president’s arguments in a saga that is expected to reach the Supreme Court.

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