July 25 (UPI) — President Donald Trump‘s latest round of sweeping tariffs was hit with a lawsuit on Friday, just hours after going into effect.
Two small businesses challenged the newest levies, which apply 10% to 12.5% tariffs to more than 80 countries, justified under a provision to prevent goods made with forced labor from being imported.
The lawsuit was filed by a spice company in New York, Burlap and Barrel, and a California watch store, Collective Horology.
They are represented by the Liberty Justice Center, a legal nonprofit that won a Supreme Court case against the president’s previous round of tariffs.
Since the loss in court earlier this year, Trump has explored other legal authorities to support his tariffs and bypass congressional approval.
“Forced labor is morally indefensible, but an important objective does not give the government permission to ignore the law,” said Sara Albrecht, CEO of the Liberty Justice Center, in a statement. “The administration allowed one global tariff to expire and immediately replaced it with another under a different statute. Changing the statute doesn’t change the law. Every tariff authority has limits, and every administration must respect them.”
In the lawsuit, plaintiffs said the U.S. Trade Representative “failed to provide a reasoned, record-based explanation for its determinations.”
“This is the third time the administration has attempted to impose its global tariff policy without following the statutory limits,” said Jeffrey Schwab, senior counsel and director of litigation at the Liberty Justice Center, in a statement.
“Section 301 is a targeted, country-specific and practice-specific remedial authority,” Schwab added. “It is not a freestanding authorization to tax substantially all imports from substantially all countries at preestablished rates.”