In a landmark rebuke of executive authority, a U.S. federal court has struck down President Donald Trump’s sweeping “Liberation Day” tariffs, declaring them unconstitutional and permanently blocking their enforcement. The ruling, issued by the New York-based Court of International Trade, targets one of the Trump administration’s most aggressive and controversial economic maneuvers — using emergency powers to reshape global trade policy.
At the heart of the ruling is the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 (IEEPA), a statute that had never before been employed to impose broad-based tariffs. Trump, however, leveraged it to place high tariffs on goods from dozens of countries, citing a national emergency to justify bypassing Congress.
But the three-judge panel wasn’t buying it.
“The court does not read IEEPA to confer such unbounded authority,” the judges wrote. They emphasized that the Constitution explicitly gives Congress—not the president—the power to regulate commerce with foreign nations, and that the president's emergency powers under IEEPA are not a blank check.
The ruling was prompted by two lawsuits — one filed by a coalition of affected businesses and another by a dozen U.S. states, both arguing that the president had unlawfully hijacked trade policy under the guise of emergency powers.
Crucially, the court found that there was no legitimate emergency to justify invoking IEEPA. “The Worldwide and Retaliatory Tariffs lack any identifiable limits,” the judges declared, effectively stating that Trump’s orders violated the law and the Constitution by being both overbroad and baseless.
As a result, the tariffs were vacated and permanently enjoined, putting an abrupt end to their legal force.
The ruling strikes a serious blow to a signature pillar of Trump’s economic playbook. Throughout his presidency and post-presidency economic strategy, Trump has championed tariffs as tools of economic nationalism — arguing that they’re vital to rebuilding U.S. manufacturing, curbing foreign abuse, and coercing trade concessions.
The “Liberation Day” tariffs were the next evolution of this strategy, aimed at restoring American economic sovereignty. Trump positioned them as both economic defense and strategic offense—a way to hit back at unfair trade partners, fix imbalanced agreements, and even exert pressure on foreign policy fronts like immigration and drug trafficking.
But the court's decision draws a bright red line around executive overreach.
What this decision makes clear is that the judiciary is not prepared to allow the president — even in the name of economic revival or national security — to bypass the separation of powers. The Constitution vests Congress with trade authority for a reason: to prevent unchecked economic warfare from being waged by a single office.
By slapping down these tariffs, the Court of International Trade restores the balance between the branches and sets a potent precedent: emergency powers can’t be used as a backdoor for sweeping trade realignments.