Today, the Liberty Justice Center and I filed our appellate brief in VOS Selections, Inc. v. Trump, the case challenging Trump's massive "Liberation Day" tariffs. Our litigation team also now includes Neal Katyal and Michael McConnell, leading constitutional law scholars and appellate litigators on different sides of the political spectrum. It is an honor to work with the two of them and their teams, and with the LJC team led by Jeffrey Schwab.
The case is now before the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, and we are defending a unanimous ruling in our favor by the US Court of International Trade. As before, the key issue in the case is that the government claims the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 (IEEPA) grants the president unlimited power to impose tariffs on any nation, in any amount, for any reason, for any length of time. We argue IEEPA grants no such power, and if it did it would be an unconstitutional delegation of legislative power to the executive. The Court of International Trade rightly ruled that IEEPA does not "does not authorize the President to impose unbounded tariffs" and that such "an unlimited delegation of tariff authority would constitute an improper abdication of legislative power to another branch of government. We hope the Federal Circuit will reach the same conclusions.
