Trump team anxious over court threat to tariffs

Administration officials are warning of calamity if courts remove the sweeping tariffs President Donald Trump imposed on emergency grounds.

Trump has used the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to place tariffs on goods from countries worldwide. The act grants the president broad powers to regulate transactions without the approval of Congress as needed for national security purposes, but it has not been used in the past for broad-based tariffs. Trump’s use of the law for tariffs is now being challenged.

Devin Watkins, an attorney at the libertarian Competitive Enterprise Institute, told the Washington Examiner that he thinks the courts will strike down the tariffs imposed under IEEPA.