Posted on 04/15/2025 4:41:01 AM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
A group of five small businesses sued President Donald Trump on Monday, seeking to block new tariffs he has imposed on foreign imports in recent weeks.
The lawsuit in the U.S. Court of International Trade alleges that Trump has illegally usurped Congress’ power to levy tariffs by claiming that trade deficits with other countries constitute an emergency.
The Liberty Justice Center, which is representing the owner-operated companies, said Trump’s new tariffs of at least 10% on imports from most countries and higher rates for scores of other nations are devastating small businesses across the country.
“His claimed emergency is a figment of his own imagination: trade deficits, which have persisted for decades without causing economic harm, are not an emergency,” the suit says.
“Nor do these trade deficits constitute an ‘unusual and extraordinary threat.’”
The Liberty Justice Center noted that the Trump administration imposed tariffs even on countries with which the United States does not have a trade deficit, “further undermining the administration’s justification.”
“This Court should declare the President’s unprecedented power grab illegal, enjoin the operation of the executive actions that purport to impose these tariffs under the IEEPA and reaffirm this country’s core founding principle: there shall be no taxation without representation,” the suit says.
The plaintiffs include New York-based VOS Selections, which imports and distributes small-production wines, spirits, and sakes; FishUSA in Pennsylvania, a retail and wholesale e-commerce business making and selling sportfishing tackle and related gear; and Genova Pipe in Utah, which makes plastic pipe, conduit, and fittings for plumbing, irrigation, drainage, and electrical applications.
MicroKits LLC in Virginia, which makes educational electronic kits and musical instruments, and Terry Precision Cycling, a Vermont-based brand of women’s cycling apparel, are also plaintiffs.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnbc.com ...
Hospital emergency rooms should offer the following evidence-based services to all individuals who present with alcohol or drug-related emergencies:
Screening and diagnostic assessment for substance use disorder,
Opioid agonist medication for untreated opioid use disorder or treatment of opioid withdrawal, and
Warm handoff or facilitated referral to ongoing SUD care alongside naloxone at discharge.
https://www.lac.org/resource/know-your-rights-in-the-emergency-room
“Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (“EMTALA”)”
https://www.lac.org/assets/files/Hospital-Administrator-Guide_v3.pdf
When an overdosing junkie shows up, it is an emergency.
No standing......................
These are probably legit businesses.
A group of five Chinese small businesses................
This tariff bs will end soon.
I’d be pissed too if a few nitwits were running
American trade policy.
You nailed it. The people alway preaching “change” don’t want change if it’s going to mess up their status quo, free government money programs.
Everyone of them narcissistic for even thinking they have such standing that the constitutional authority vested in a president is subservient to their whims.
We must worship the almighty dollar no matter what it means to this Republic.
Arguably, yes. But that's the exact issue on which they are suing. Congress gave the President power to impose tariffs in cases of a national security or emergency, so the argument is that the kind of blanket tariffs Trump has imposed don't qualify as actual emergencies, and/or are not truly national security.
I think they have a pretty good legal argument - essentially the one Rand Paul has been making. For starters, tariffs have been imposed on some small countries who export to us completely innocuous products and actually run a trade deficit of their own with us. Difficult to defend those as truly national security related, or an "emergency".
I'm sure there are people who argue that running a trade deficit in general is a "national emergency", But the legal response to that is if you read those terms that broadly, they swallow the entire rule and the president can do whatever he wants on tariffs. That's not what the laws passed by Congress say, because they were clearly intended on their face to be limited to specific situations.
“His claimed emergency is a figment of his own imagination: trade deficits, which have persisted for decades without causing economic harm, are not an emergency,” the suit says.
“Nor do these trade deficits constitute an ‘unusual and extraordinary threat.’”
80M people would disagree. $36T in debt is an emergency. The dominance of the CCP, having a grip on critical materials, is a threat. The export of American jobs causes ‘economic harm’ to citizens.
Talk about out of touch.
This group certainly has standing. They are parties that could demonstrate damage to themselves and that is pretty much the definition of standing.
But what they cannot do is assign to the court the ability to define emergency. They may find a court willing to declare itself the arbiter of the word emergency, but that has no chance whatsoever of surviving appeal.
I doubt there is a law that defines emergency, and any appeal is going to insist that the court interpret the law.
So lets keep the imbalance to save these small on line only businesses while thousands of legitimate workers in the field remain out of work
Targeted tariffs against specific countries for specific reasons, like Mexico for fentanyl or China for stealing our technology in destroying national Security industries, are pretty defensible. But imposing a blanket, 10% tariff on more than a hundred countries is extraordinarily difficult to justify as falling under the standards set by Congress.
I'll just add that a whole lot of people seem to confuse the distinction between whether or not the tariffs are a good idea, and whether the president has the authority to impose them unilaterally.
Could it be that there is an organizer? And who is paying the legal fees?
The problem is where these Businesses aren’t having an emergency, they are probably doing swell, it’s the nation that’s having the emergency.
Id wager that a $70 TRILLION debt or whether it is IS an emergency! Every bit as much as a family who goes into debt so large they can never get out of it again.
Whether or not the president actually has the unilateral power to impose across the board tariffs on virtually, every other country is a legitimate question. That's true regardless of whether or not the tariffs themselves are a good idea.
They won’t need the foreign imports because our immigration crackdown would mean they won’t have employees.
The increasing national debt has been a problem that has been going on for decades, and there has been plenty of time for Presidents and Congresses to pass tariffs if they believe that is the solution. The fact that they have not done so is a political choice.
Just because the president and Congress choose not to enact legislation that we may believe is necessary does grant this OR ANY OTHER President the legal authority to impose what he wants to do simply by calling it an emergency.
This was the exact same kind of extra- Constitutional logic both Obama and Biden tried to use to ram through things that they couldn't get through Congress. It was Obama's Clean Power Plan, where he to impose green energy on the US by Executive Order because Congress wouldn't do it. There, the excuse was a "climate emergency". Biden tried to do the same thing with student loans, once again on the grounds that he had to act because "Congress refuse to."
Presidents don't get more power just because they can't get what they want through Congress.
Traitors all. These are the ones that Antifa/BLM thugs were told not to touch.
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