Today, twenty-five largely Democratic-controlled state governments filed a lawsuit challenging Donald Trump's massive new Section 301 tariffs. The complaint, filed in the US Court of International Trade, is available here. The suit is led by the state of Oregon, which also played a key role in leading state challenges to previous illegal Trump tariffs, including the IEEPA tariffs invalidated by the Supreme Court in February (the Oregon lawsuit was consolidated with one I helped litigate on behalf of private small businesses harmed by the tariffs), and the more recent decision striking down Trump's Section 122 tariffs. I commend Oregon Deputy Attorney General Ben Gutman and his legal team for their invaluable work on these issues.
I previously wrote about why the Section 301 tariffs - imposed on the pretext that they are needed to combat forced labor - are illegal and likely to further damage the US economy and our credibility with trading partners. This is the third lawsuit challenging the Section 301 tariffs. In earlier posts, I wrote about the one filed by the Liberty Justice Center (the public interest organization I worked with in the IEEPA case) on behalf of two small businesses, and one filed by several firms, including Learning Resources, Inc., a toy manufacturer whose case was consolidated with ours in the IEEPA litigation, and eventually gave its name to the Supreme Court decision.
