Newsmax TV judicial analyst Andrew Napolitano said Tuesday on “Wake Up America” that President Donald Trump’s tariffs could be removed “across the board” due to a lawsuit being heard before the Court of International Trade.
Napolitano said, “The real argument is that the president doesn’t have the authority to impose the tariffs because he used a statute that requires an emergency. An emergency is a sudden and unexpected event. The emergency that President Trump suggested was the basis for the tariffs was the imbalance of trade — which is not an emergency because we’ve had it since 1934. That’s the argument in a nutshell. The other argument is a tariff is a sales tax, and under the Constitution, only Congress can impose a tax. So if Congress wants to impose the tariffs, this wine company and everybody else is stuck with them. But the president doesn’t have the authority to do it on his own.”
He continued, “This is a bona-fide federal court so far below the radar screen. Many lawyers and even judges don’t even know it exists. It has jurisdiction over the tariffs. This is not like a judge in New Jersey trying to extend her jurisdiction to California. This is a court in lower Manhattan that exists to hear complaints about international trade. They could stop the tariffs like that.”
Napolitano added, “If they find the president acted unconstitutionally, they will stop the tariffs across the board and kick it back to Congress. Then Trump has to craft legislation, and then he has to propose it to Congress, and in the interim, all those tariffs stop. On the other hand, if they say, this is a foreign policy issue, even though it is a sales tax, we’re not going to interfere with foreign policy. If you don’t like what we said, appeal us.”
He concluded, “It’s a bona fide, serious challenge that the DOJ is taking seriously.”
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