The Federal Appeals Court has offered US President Donald Trump a temporary delay in the enforcement of a ruling that threatens to overturn the bulk of the president’s tariff policy, giving the White House at least some chance to continue implementing it, US media reported on Friday.
However, the court’s final ruling could still deprive Trump of the ability to maintain the tariffs, reducing them from nearly 27% to less than 6%.
The administration is considering alternative legal mechanisms for imposing tariffs, but such a process could be complicated and time-consuming.
On Wednesday, a US trade court ruled that the tariff regime introduced by the president was illegal, which could block Trump’s controversial global trade policy. But on Thursday, an appeals court agreed to a temporary pause in the decision pending consideration of an appeal. The Trump administration is expected to take the case to the Supreme Court if it loses at this stage.
The decision by a three-judge panel of the New York International Trade Court came after several lawsuits claiming that Trump exceeded his authority by making US trade policy dependent on his whims and causing economic chaos around the world.
On Thursday, the Trump administration filed a motion for “emergency relief” from the ruling “to avoid irreparable harm to national security and the economy that is at stake.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the judges “brazenly abused their judicial power to usurp President Trump’s authority,” which she described as an example of judicial overreach. “Ultimately, the Supreme Court must put an end to this,” she said.
