The lawsuit alleges that the administration violated Section 301 of the Trade Act, which was its justification for the new tariffs, by failing to follow its requirements for imposing tariffs and by implementing the tariffs with no clear connection to the stated goal of combatting forced labor practices, according to the release.
While investigations into single countries under Section 301 typically take up to a year to complete, the Trump administration announced investigations into 59 countries and the European Union in March and enacted tariffs under Section 301 on July 31, per the release.
“After losing at the Supreme Court, the administration is once again trying to illegally raise taxes on families and businesses with a new round of tariffs,” New York Attorney General Letitia James said in the release. “No matter how the administration tries to justify it, the law and our Constitution are clear that the president does not have the power to impose sweeping tariffs on whatever countries he wants.”
CNBC reported Monday that White House spokesperson Kush Desai rejected that states’ argument that the Trump administration used Section 301 as a pretext for imposing tariffs.
“The United States is using its lawful authority to obtain the elimination of unreasonable acts, policies and practices that burden U.S. commerce,” Desai said in a statement, per the report. “A foreign country’s failure to impose and effectively enforce a prohibition on the importation of goods produced with forced labor is unreasonable and burdens U.S. commerce, including American workers, and must be addressed.”
President Donald Trump said in a July 23 presidential memorandum that the United States Trade Representative (USTR) initiated an investigation under Section 301 in March and determined that 60 economies had practices that were actionable under Section 301. The USTR recommended ad valorem tariffs of 10% on some of the economies and 12.5% on others, depending on whether they had imposed forced labor import prohibitions.
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