A panel of federal judges on Wednesday blocked President Trump from imposing some of his steepest tariffs on China and other U.S. trading partners, finding in two cases that he vastly overstepped his ability to issue those expansive duties under federal law.
The ruling, by the U.S. Court of International Trade, delivered an early yet significant setback to Mr. Trump in his campaign to strike a series of agreements that reorient the nation’s trading relationships, setting up a legal fight that could soon reach the Supreme Court.
The cases centered on the president’s use of a 1977 federal economic emergency law to issue many of his steep duties, including some of his tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China, and his “reciprocal” rates on much of the rest of the world, which Mr. Trump announced and then suspended in April.
The law does not specify tariffs as a tool available to the president to protect the United States from economic threats. But Mr. Trump has invoked its powers anyway, citing a need to take drastic action in response to a wide variety of urgent matters — including the flow of fentanyl into the United States, for example, and the country’s persistent trade deficit with much of the world.