The TOI correspondent in Washington: A US federal trade court on Wednesday torpedoed President Donald Trump’s deployment of tariffs, rejecting among other things his administration’s argument that he used the carrot of trade to defuse the India-Pakistan conflict. Instead, the court ruled that Trump exceeded his authority in usurping powers normally vested in Congress.The ruling by the little-known Court of International Trade in New York halted punitive tariffs the MAGA supremo announced on almost the entire world on April 2 under the banner of “Liberation Day,” pending an appeal the Justice Department said it would file in the US Court of Appeals.The trade court ruled that federal law did not grant the President “unbounded authority” to tax imports from nearly every country around the world, while directing the “challenged Tariff Orders will be vacated and their operation permanently enjoined.”Plaintiffs in the case included 12 Democrat-run states that argued that the tariffs impacted them adversely and numerous businesses reliant on foreign suppliers.The US President had claimed broad authority to set global tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), which is meant to address “unusual and extraordinary” threats during a national emergency, but the court ruled the argument came up short. “It may be a very dandy plan, but it has to meet the statute,” Jane Restani, a senior judge on the three-member bipartisan bench who was nominated to the trade court by President Ronald Reagan noted during prolonged arguments on the issue. The administration had also argued that hamstringing the President could revive the India-Pakistan conflict, claiming Trump had used his tariff power to broker a ceasefire between India and Pakistan — an assertion New Delhi has dismissed as bogus. The court ruling ignored the administration’s claim. The court gave the Trump administration up to 10 days to end the tariff imposition — a ruling that sent the stock market soaring — but an angry White House indicated it was not about to fold on the issue, even as critics mocked the President with a new nickname: “TACO” — Trump Always Chickens Out.Also read: What is ‘TACO trade’ – a new nickname mocking Trump’s tariff approachA White House spokesman, Kush Desai, lashed out at the ruling saying “it is not for unelected judges to decide how to properly address a national emergency” and asserting that the unfair trade relationships which the President was trying to correct through tariffs, had “decimated American communities, left our workers behind and weakened our defense industrial base.”For now though, the court ruling weakens the administration’s hand in efforts to reach trade deals with scores of countries, including India, all of whom find breathing space and time from an unexpected quarter — an American court.
