Just days ago the US Court of International Trade put a whammy on Donny’s dreams of harsh tariffs on the world…..and yesterday a Trumpite came to the rescue.

President Trump’s tariffs were reinstated by a federal appeals court ruling on Thursday. The court’s ruling came after a second federal court found that an emergency powers law does not give Trump authority to enact tariffs, and that most of the ones he’s already ordered after invoking the International Emergency Economic Powers Act are unlawful.

• US District Judge Rudolph Contreras ruled that the law does not permit the president to “unilaterally impose, revoke, pause, reinstate, and adjust tariffs to reorder the global economy,” the Hill reports. The US Court of International Trade reached the same conclusion on Wednesday.
• The appeals court didn’t rule on the merits of the tariffs or the trade court’s ruling, but granted an emergency request to hold up the ruling, allowing Trump to keep collecting the tariffs while the issue is being decided in the courts, per the AP.
• The Justice Department asked two sets of judges to let the Trump administration proceed with its tariffs, per the New York Times. If need be, administration officials had said they’d ask the Supreme Court on Friday for emergency relief, per the Washington Post.
• After the 33-page ruling by Contreras, who was appointed by Barack Obama, for the DC District Court, the government filed another appeal. His ruling gave the government 14 days to appeal before it took effect, meaning the tariffs are still in place for now.
• White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Thursday that there are “other legal authorities” Trump could use to impose tariffs, per the Guardian, and that he “is willing to use those.” She criticized what she called “a troubling and dangerous trend of unelected judges inserting themselves into the presidential decision-making process.”
• The Guardian notes that only three of the 11 judges who granted the stay were appointed by Republican presidents. After the ruling, Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro blasted the 12 states that sued as elitist Democratic coastal states, though Arizona, Nevada, Colorado, Illinois, and Minnesota aren’t on either coast and the first two voted for Trump last year.

A loyal visitor to IST asked if this could be settled by the Supreme Court…..and I answered that I did not know for sure….and now the answer is yes if could be settled by SCOTUS.

SCOTUS has been in Trump’s corner for many of its rulings….so the pathetic tariff question will be answered by a pack of political hacks.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”