The Trump administration defended its broad tariff regime Thursday to a panel of sharply skeptical federal judges who repeatedly questioned whether Congress gave the president such broad tariff powers.
The 11-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit grilled the Justice Department attorney and challengers over the legality of the tariffs, which have been a signature domestic and foreign policy strategy in the second Trump administration. A lower court found the tariffs, which Trump used a four-decade old statute to impose for the first time, violate the law.
During oral arguments Thursday, Judge Raymond T. Chen questioned whether Trump’s broad argument about his emergency power “would sound the death knell of the Constitution” by allowing him to rewrite tariff law. Chen said that it didn’t appear the administration could rely on a court case known as Yoshida upholding limited Nixon-era tariffs to justify the current broad ones.
