24 States Sue Over Trump's Latest Tariffs

A coalition of 24 Democratic state attorneys general and governors filed a lawsuit Thursday asking the U.S. Court of International Trade to block implementation of President Donald Trump’s new global 10 percent tariff on the grounds that it is unconstitutional and violates the law.

“Once again, President Trump is ignoring the law and the Constitution to effectively raise taxes on consumers and small businesses,” New York Attorney General Letitia James said in a statement. “After the Supreme Court rejected his first attempt to impose sweeping tariffs, the president is causing more economic chaos and expecting Americans to foot the bill.”

The states are asking the CIT to declare the new tariffs illegal and prevent them from being implemented. They also want the federal government to refund states the cost of the new tariffs while they were in effect.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Attorneys general for Oregon, Arizona and California are co-leading the litigation with James. All four states were part of the earlier lawsuit that led to the Supreme Court decision against many of Trump's tariffs.

At a virtual press conference on Thursday, they expressed confidence in being able to persuade the CIT to issue an injunction to stop the new tariffs even though some legal experts are skeptical any such move would be upheld on appeal because of the short duration of the new duties.

"We are 100 percent confident that we will be successful in the Court of International Trade," James said.

The move follows the Supreme Court’s decision Feb. 20 that Trump exceeded his authority under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose tariffs last year on virtually every country in the world.

Trump responded by replacing those tariffs, which ranged from 10 to 50 percent depending on the country, with a new 10 percent tariff for 150 days, relying on a never-before-used law known as Section 122 of the 1974 Trade Act.

That statute allows the president to impose a surcharge as high as 15 percent on imports for up to 150 days to address a “large and serious” balance of payments deficit. The administration has said it plans to use Section 122 as a bridge while it carries out trade investigations under separate statutes to put longer-lasting tariffs in place.

Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes said Trump is abusing the law by asserting the large U.S. trade deficit constitutes a balance of payments deficit even though "they are not the same thing at all."

"The president either doesn't know the difference or he doesn't care," Mayes continued. "Either way, he is breaking the law again today."

In a statement describing the lawsuit, James’ office argued that “balance of payment problems no longer occur” in the U.S. because they happen only under a fixed-rate exchange system like the gold standard, which the U.S. government abandoned in the early 1970s.

The fact that the U.S. runs a large trade deficit “Is not a legitimate reason for imposing tariffs under Section 122,” the New York statement said. “In fact, the administration admitted during the prior lawsuit against the president’s IEEPA tariffs that trade deficits ‘are conceptually distinct from balance of payments deficits.’”

Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield expressed regret that no Republican state attorney general felt comfortable joining the case even though their states have also suffered from Trump's tariffs.

"I think in the current political environment, it's very difficult for Republicans to join on to a case like this, challenging their party's leader. ... We absolutely know that there are free trade Republicans out there," Rayfield said.

"I think they're secretly rooting for us," California Attorney General Rob Bonta added, "because when we deliver a victory and get tariffs struck down, their residents benefit, their businesses benefit. But they seemingly won't dare to stand up for the rule of law, even when they're being hurt by a president who is breaking it and harming the people in their state."

The states also argue that Trump’s tariffs fail to fit the criteria under Section 122, which they said requires new tariffs to be applied consistently in several ways, including that they are not applied in a discriminatory fashion.

“Yet the new tariffs exempt many goods from Canada, Mexico, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua. They also include 84 pages of specific product exemptions,” the New York statement said.

Also joining the lawsuit are the attorneys general of Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin, and the governors of Kentucky and Pennsylvania.

Brock Hrehor contributed to this report.