Vermont is joining round two of the fight over President Donald Trump’s trade war.
Attorney General Charity Clark joined 23 other, mostly Democrat-controlled states on Thursday in a legal challenge to the across-the-board tariffs Trump imposed last month after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down his original regime of import fees.
The lawsuit, filed at the U.S. Court of International Trade, accuses Trump of abusing another arcane federal statute to “sidestep” the Supreme Court’s decision. Shortly after the high court’s ruling, Trump announced that he would be imposing 10% tariffs on many goods from most countries. He has said he intends to soon raise the rate to 15%.
“This latest scheme is a blatant attempt to circumvent the Supreme Court’s decision and the limitations on the President’s authority established by the Constitution and Congress,” Clark, a Democrat, said in a press release.
Vermont took part in the legal action that ultimately invalidated Trump’s original tariff policy. A Burlington specialty apparel company, Terry Precision Cycling, served as a plaintiff in a parallel lawsuit filed by small businesses who were harmed by the import fees.
Trump had previously relied on the International Emergency Economic Powers Act as the legal basis for tariffs, though the 1977 statute did not mention them. In the wake of the Supreme Court ruling, the president turned to the Trade Act of 1974. That law authorizes tariffs to remedy “large and serious balance-of-payments deficits,” though no president before Trump had invoked it.
The attorneys general contend that Trump is erroneously conflating trade deficits, in which the United States imports more from a country than it exports to it, with the more complex, disused concept of “balance of payments” described in the law.
In doing so, Trump has again unlawfully seized taxation power that belongs with Congress, the states wrote.
The case begins the next bout of legal wrangling over tariffs. The lawsuit was filed a day after a judge from the same court ruled that the federal government must refund companies that paid the illegal tariffs.
The Trade Act of 1974 allows tariffs for up to 150 days. Trump has said he intends to use another part of federal law to continue tariffs beyond that.
