Trump admin warns it’ll take tariffs case to Supreme Court as soon as Friday following sweeping ruling

The Trump administration on Thursday warned it would go to the Supreme Court as soon as Friday if a federal appeals court did not halt a ruling to block many of the president’s tariffs.

In a court filing in Washington, the Justice Department said the decision from the US Court of International Trade the day before intruded upon President Trump’s executive authority.

It asked the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to pause the ruling while the White House pursues an appeal.

“Absent at least interim relief from this Court, the United States plans to seek emergency relief from the Supreme Court tomorrow,” the administration said in the filing.

The White House did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.

On Wednesday, the Court of International Trade argued that federal law does not grant Trump “unbounded authority” to tax imports from nations around the world and blocked 6.7 percentage points worth of the levies.

It said Trump’s tariffs “exceed any authority granted” to the executive branch and gave him 10 days to roll back the duties.

White House spokesman Kush Desai condemned the decision, saying that unfair trade relationships had “decimated American communities, left our workers behind and weakened our defense industrial base – facts that the court did not dispute.”

But major Wall Street banks on Thursday pointed out that Trump might be able to keep many of his tariffs in place by taking advantage of specific trade laws.

The court’s Wednesday decision, for example, does not pause the taxes on steel, aluminum and cars, since these were enacted under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act, which allows the president to impose tariffs if excessive foreign imports pose a national security risk.

“The tariff levels that we had yesterday are probably going to be the tariff levels that we have tomorrow, because there are so many different authorities the administration can reach into to put it back together,” Michael Zezas, Morgan Stanley’s global head of fixed income and thematic research, told Bloomberg TV on Thursday.

Trump’s power to “raise and escalate — it might be a little bit slower moving, but it is still there,” he added.
Alec Phillips, chief US political economist at Goldman Sachs, wrote in a note to clients that the ruling “represents a setback for the administration’s tariff plans and increases uncertainty but might not change the final outcome for most major US trading partners.”

The Trump administration signaled it’s unlikely to pursue alternative methods to levy tariffs.
“There are different approaches that would take a couple of months,” Kevin Hassett, director of the National Economic Council, said on Fox Business.

“But we’re not planning to pursue those right now because we’re very, very confident that this really is incorrect.”

Goldman’s Phillips said he does not expect the court’s ruling to impact the massive Republican tax bill that passed the House last week since “tariff revenue was never counted toward offsetting the cost of the package, and most lawmakers never made a clear link between the two issues.”

Yet the tariffs were likely to raise nearly $200 billion on an annual basis – approximately the same amount by which the spending bill would raise the deficit next year, Phillips wrote.

“For now, we expect the Trump administration will find other ways to impose tariffs, so we still expect most of this revenue to materialize,” he added.