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Posted on 05/16/2025 4:46:07 AM PDT by MtnClimber
The fix appears to be in for two court cases against President Donald Trump’s tariffs, according to a very knowledgeable source.
Last month, five domestic businesses filed a lawsuit in a little known trade court in New York challenging Trump’s tariffs, arguing they have to rely on imported goods that are not reasonably available to them in the U.S.
In his April 2 executive order imposing a set of reciprocal tariffs, Trump declared a national emergency, calling trade deficits a threat to the nation’s national security and economy.
Trump’s tariffs are central to his economic agenda and designed to reduce the trade deficits between the United States and other world powers.
A three-judge panel at the United States Court of International Trade in lower Manhattan heard arguments in the case Tuesday, and reportedly “appeared skeptical” of the president’s arguments.
If the panel decides that Trump’s emergency declaration was unlawful, it would effectively block the president’s global tariffs and upend his economic agenda.
The chief judge of the United States Court of International Trade is Mark A Barnett, who joined the court in 2013 after a nomination from President Barack Obama. He became chief judge on April 6, 2021.
According to the well-placed source, rather than drawing the panel at random, Chief Judge Barnett “fixed” the outcome by selecting three judges whom he knew would “overrule the president” and render his tariffs “null and void.”
The source told American Greatness he was given this information by “very reliable people” who are “very close to the court.”
The three judges deliberating the case are Judge Gary S. Katzmann, an Obama appointee; Judge Timothy M. Reif, a Democrat appointed by Trump in 2019; and Senior Judge Jane A. Restani, appointed by President Reagan in 1983.
The same panel is reportedly set to hear arguments “in a parallel case brought by 12 state attorneys general” on May 21.
The Courthouse News Service provided a rundown of the court proceedings on Tuesday:
Jeffrey Schwab, of the Liberty Justice Center and representing the businesses, argued Tuesday that Congress intended the 1977 statute to grant presidents the ability to regulate imports in an emergency, such as increasing inspection at ports, not impose tariffs.
He said Trump’s Liberation Day tariffs “represent an unprecedented and unlawful expansion of executive power,” noting that the U.S. has faced a slowly growing trade deficit since the turn of the century, not the sort of “unusual and extraordinary threat” required by the statute.
Restani pushed Schwab to define a standard that the court could use to decide whether Trump’s emergency declaration was lawful, but Schwab argued that a definition was unnecessary considering the unprecedented nature of the case.
“I’m asking the court to be an umpire and call a strike, and you’re asking me, ‘What’s the strike zone, is it at the knees or slightly below the knees?’” Schwab said. “I’m saying it’s a wild pitch, it’s on the other side of the batter and hit the backstop. So we don’t need to debate the difference between the strike zone.”
Justice Department attorney Eric Hamilton argued that the president had clear discretion to decide the cumulative effect of the ongoing trade deficits had reached the point of emergency.
Hamilton said that the nation’s reliance on imports from other countries has made the supply chain vulnerable, potentially exposing national security risks.
Ultimately, Hamilton argued Trump’s declaration is not reviewable by the courts because it is a political question and thus only Congress could intervene.
Senate Republicans on April 30 narrowly shot down a Democrat effort to terminate Trump’s declared emergency.
The next stop in court for Trump should he lose the two cases would be the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington D.C. Further appeals could then be taken to the Supreme Court of the United States.
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These judges are committing treason. Are they above the law? What will the FBI do?
I think the Administration’s legal position on the 10% across the board tariffs is pretty weak. A stronger argument with the targeted tariffs.
$37 Trillion and climbing debt constitutes an emergency.
EC
This court answers to someone other than the United States of America.
Treason.
So the argument against Trump is that the disaster of trade deficits didn't happen fast enough to constitute an emergent condition.
That's like showing up at an emergency room feeling ill only to be turned away because it's a diagnosis of slow moving metastatic cancer.
a) it's the diagnosis of the damage being done by trade deficits and not how fast it develops that's dispositive;
b) under the law, making that decision is up to the President, not anyone else, so as long as the decision has a rational bass, it's legal.
What’s the FBI got to do with it?
You cannot have surrender without monkeys.
Executive branch punching the Judicial branch in the nose by arresting the rogue judges at gunpoint and charging them with treason, sedition and baker act violations.
That is only 1 person.
Right now every Judge in the US seems to believe she or he has the same presidential authority as that 1 person.
Yesterday it appeared that oral arguments in front of our intellectually challenged US Supreme Court seemed to offer no hope of a realistic or timely answer to the pertinent issues.
I think the US SURPREMES will continue to avoid a one side ruling but I also believe President TRUMP is RIGHT.
Nothing is preventing the businesses from getting what they need , theyll just pay more for it. Just like we all paid more when Biden was pumping out trillions of dollars for illegal aliens and green initiative. Seems like an easy appeal. They cant stack every court.
Once the judges declare that they are now in charge of the nation’s foreign policy, Trump’s next step needs to be the declare the tariffs under a different law. There are several laws that give the president certain tariff powers.
Then he needs to start campaigning in every Congressional district and state where there are Republicans in Congress opposing helping him on the tariff issue and call for them to be primary challenged if they do not pass new legislation explicitly giving the president these rights written in a way that even the most activist judges could not overturn them. He needs to also do this to target Dems in Rust Belt states that he won. Make it clear they are for Wall St and the big multinational outsourcers and not for US workers or for forcing fair trade deals to help the American economy in its precarious high-debt situation. Do everything possible to paint the Dems and the anti-Trump Repubs as elitists fighting against the little people. In the end, this could even be a helpful thing in a much larger sense.
This is a huge cornerstone of Trump’s economic agenda. If they torpedo the trade deals he’s working out because he has this leverage currently or force us to take much weaker deals by taking away his biggest bargaining chip, this could be very economically harmful while Trump has us pointed in the direction of a huge economic boom. He better be working on a wide variety of strategies of getting around the judicial tyrants and their usurpation of his presidential powers.
As much as I dislike these efforts to block the president’s agenda, we have to work our way up the judicial ladder—that’s how the system has to function.
Siccing the FBI on judges could easily backfire. It might rally even more judges to push back: “You can’t arrest all of us.”
At that point, we’d be facing not just a full-blown constitutional crisis, but a political crisis as well.
Arresting just one judge could force the Supreme Court to get off their duffs and rule on lower courts interfering with the Chief Executive. But the arrest has to be serious, not a show arrest.
The Supreme Court has been a major disappointment.
In his majority opinion, Justice John Marshall Harlan said the president was acting in his executive role executing a congressional policy. “What the president was required to do was simply in execution of the act of Congress. It was not the making of law. He was the mere agent of the lawmaking department to ascertain and declare the event upon which its expressed will was to take effect.”
https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/how-congress-delegates-its-tariff-powers-to-the-president
Congress needs to get off their a$$es and stop this $hit.
Exactly. So what does the Constitution say about the President's authority to regulate trade with other countries?
Nothing.
The Constitution, as written and amended, gave to Congress, not the President, the power to regulate commerce with other countries. Here's Article I, Section 8, listing the powers of Congress:
The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States...To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes.
So, the only power the President has to impose tariffs is whatever authority Congress chooses to give him. Therefore, a legal challenge as to whether the President's imposition of tariffs is within the limits proscribed by Congress is an entirely reasonable role for the judiciary.
If an injunction is wrongly issued, the Supreme Court can -- and has - reversed it.
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