Learning Resources and other small businesses sued Friday over Trump's Section 301 tariffs on 60 countries. Legal experts say the new levies may be harder to challenge than earlier rounds.
NEW YORK – Trump's tariffs are facing another legal challenge.
Two lawsuits filed by small businesses on Friday target the sweeping tariffs announced Thursday, which impose double-digit levies on 60 trading partners. The tariffs cover 99% of US imports.
The administration implemented them under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, citing countries' failure to prevent imports produced by forced labor. Critics say the real goal is to replace the worldwide tariffs Trump imposed last year that the Supreme Court struck down in February. Those expired Friday.
Educational toy company Learning Resources, which won its Supreme Court challenge against the earlier tariffs, filed a new suit in the Court of International Trade along with several other small businesses. A second lawsuit was filed by Burlap and Barrel, a New York spice company, and Collective Horology, a watch retailer based in Ventura, California. Liberty Justice Center, a libertarian advocacy group, represents them.
Both lawsuits argue the government did not adequately establish its case against each specific economy or spell out how the tariffs will eliminate the practice they target, as Section 301 requires.
“Forced labor is morally indefensible,” said Sara Albrecht, chairman and CEO of the Liberty Justice Center. “An important objective does not give the government permission to ignore the law. The administration allowed one global tariff to expire and immediately replaced it with another under a different statute. Changing the statute doesn’t change the law.”
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
Legal experts say the new tariffs may be harder to overturn. Trump used Section 301 to impose big tariffs on China in his first term, and those survived court challenges.
Unlike the Section 122 levies that expired Friday, “these tariffs will be with us for the long haul,” said Patrick Childress, a partner at Holland & Knight and a former US trade official.
Even if countries enact the exact policies Washington wants, they will still need to prove they are enforcing them to the administration's satisfaction before the tariffs come off, he said. The implication, Childress added, is that “no short-term path for country-wide relief from the new Section 301 tariffs will be available.”
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