WASHINGTON, (APP – UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News – 31st Aug, 2025) A US appeals court has ruled that most tariffs issued by US President Donald Trump are illegal, opening the door for the administration to potentially have to repay billions worth of duties.
“The statute bestows significant authority on the President to undertake a number of actions in response to a declared national emergency, but none of these actions explicitly include the power to impose tariffs, duties, or the like, or the power to tax,” the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit said.
In its 7-4 ruling, the court, however, also said the tariffs could remain in place until October 14 to allow the government to appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court.
Friday’s ruling largely upheld a May decision by a specialized federal trade court in New York which had ruled Trump’s Liberation Day tariffs “exceed any authority granted to the President” under the emergency powers law and ordered a halt to the tariffs.
Shortly after the ruling on Friday, the US Attorney General’s office announced it would appeal the decision.
Trump contended that the ruling was “incorrect” and attacked the court for partisanship.
“ALL TARIFFS ARE STILL IN EFFECT! Today a Highly Partisan Appeals Court incorrectly said that our Tariffs should be removed, but they know the United States of America will win in the end,” he wrote in a post on his Truth Social network.
“If these Tariffs ever went away, it would be a total disaster for the Country.
“If allowed to stand, this Decision would literally destroy the United States of America,” he added.
The ruling affects Trump’s “reciprocal” tariffs, imposed on most countries around the world, as well as other tariffs slapped on China, Mexico and Canada.
The decades-old act, which has repeatedly been deployed by Trump during both his terms in office, grants a US president significant authority to respond to a national emergency or a major threat from overseas.
The 1977 law states that a president can pull a number of economic levers “to deal with any unusual and extraordinary threat, which has its source in whole or substantial part outside the United States, to the national security, foreign policy or economy”.
It’s been used by both Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, who invoked the act to impose sanctions on Russia after the illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014, and then again after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine eight years later.
But the appeals court stated in its decision that the emergency law “did not give the president wide-ranging authority to impose tariffs”.
APP/ift