Five small U.S. companies are suing President Donald Trump in an effort to halt the imposition of new duties that they say could prove devastating to their businesses.
Filed in the U.S. Court of International Trade on Monday, the complaint alleges that the Commander in Chief “claims the authority to unilaterally levy tariffs on goods imported from any and every country in the world, at any rate, calculated via any methodology—or mere caprice—immediately, with no notice, or public comment, or phase-in, or delay in implementation, despite massive economic impacts that are likely to do severe damage to the global economy.”
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Not only has that power not been granted in statute by Congress, they said—if Congress were to do so, it would be “an unlawful delegation of legislative power.”
Trump has invoked the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), a little-known Jimmy Carter-era trade tool, to issue unilateral tariffs against America’s trade partners—an action that the plaintiffs claim is not justified by the law’s standards.
“His claimed emergency is a figment of his own imagination: trade deficits, which have persisted for decades without causing economic harm, are not an emergency. Nor do these trade deficits constitute an ‘unusual and extraordinary threat,’” they wrote.
The plaintiffs include New York-based Victor Owen Schwartz, a distributor of wine and spirits, Utah-headquartered Genova Pipe, which manufactures plastic pipes for plumbing and other applications, Plaintiff MicroKits, LLC, a Virginia company that makes educational electronic kits and musical instruments, Pennsylvania’s Plaintiff FishUSA Inc., which sells sportfishing tackle and related gear, and Vermont-based Terry Precision Cycling, LLC, a maker of women’s cycling apparel.
Terry Precision claimed that products and inputs imported from other countries are the lifeblood of its business, as it brings in finished goods from China (now subject to a 145-percent duty rate), along with other highly-tariffed countries like Vietnam, Taiwan, Italy and the Philippines. And while the company has onshore operations to manufacture some of its goods domestically, the fabrics and trims used to do so are imported from Guatemala, El Salvador, China, and the European Union.
“The imports Terry Cycling relies on are not reasonably available from a supplier in the United States,” the group wrote in the complaint.