Today’s Federal Circuit Oral Argument in Our Tariff Case
Today, the en banc US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit hear oral arguments in VOS Selections, Inc. v. Trump, the case challenging Trump’s massive “Liberation Day” tariffs brought by the Liberty Justice Center and myself on behalf of five small businesses seriously harmed by the tariffs. You can listen to the argument here. Leading appellate litigator and Georgetown law Prof. Neal Katyal argued for us.
The case is consolidated with a similar one brought by twelve state governments, led by Oregon. We are defending a unanimous ruling in our favor by the US Court of International Trade, which held that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 (IEEPA) does not grant the president anything approaching unlimited tariff authority, and if it did it would be an unconstitutional delegation of legislative power to the executive.
It is difficult to predict case outcomes based on oral arguments, particularly one with eleven judges that have a diversity of views and interests. Still, I can make a few tentative observations.
First, there seems little, if any, support for the idea that IEEPA grants the president unlimited tariff authority of the kind the administration claims. Multiple judges expressed skepticism that the law gives him the authority to rewrite the tariff schedule or to claim “unbounded authority.” Several judges emphasized, as Judge Reyna noted, that “IEEPA doesn’t even mention the word tariffs.” From the beginning of this litigation, we have emphasized that IEEPA delegates authority to “regulate” importation, but regulation is distinct from taxation.
Even if IEEPA does allow some tariff authority, as the predecessor court to Federal Circuit ruled in United States v. Yoshida International Inc. (1975), with respect to the Trading
Article from Reason.com
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