A group of small businesses on Friday filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration over its latest wave of tariffs on 60 U.S. trade partners, less than one day after they were enacted.
The suit was filed by the Liberty Justice Center, the same organization that challenged Trump’s tariffs enacted under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act last year and won a major ruling against the government at the Supreme Court.
The center is suing the Trump administration on behalf of two small businesses: New York-based Burlap & Barrel, an online spices retailer, and California-based Collective Horology, a retailer that Liberty Justice says supports independent watchmakers.
Filed in the Court of International Trade in New York, the suit seeks to stop the government from enforcing or collecting duties imposed under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974.
The filing also asks the trade court to refund all duties unlawfully collected under the Section 301 action.
The complaint alleges that the U.S. Trade Representative “acted arbitrarily and capriciously by imposing near-uniform tariffs across 60 materially different economies without a reasoned, record-based explanation for how the tariffs would address the practices USTR identified,” Liberty said in a statement.
“The case does not dispute that governments should combat forced labor,” the group added. “It challenges USTR’s authority to impose sweeping tariffs without satisfying Section 301’s country-specific findings and remedial requirements.”
Just hours ago, at the stroke of midnight, Trump’s temporary global 10% tariff expired. In its place, the administration announced new tariffs against 60 economies around the world. Those duties range from 10% to 12.5%, although there are a number of exceptions including for some foods and fuels. It also excludes automobiles and some metals.
The administration imposed the new duties under Section 301, which was not struck down by the Supreme Court earlier this year. To do so, it carried out months-long investigations into dozens of trading partners.
The USTR said those investigations found that the 60 economies had failed “to impose and effectively enforce a prohibition on the importation of goods produced with forced labor.”
“This is the third time the administration has attempted to impose its global tariff policy without following the statutory limits,” Jeffrey Schwab, director of litigation at the Liberty Justice Center, said in a statement.
Schwab added that Section 301 “is not a freestanding authorization to tax substantially all imports from substantially all countries at preestablished rates.”
Major trading partners including China, the European Union, Canada and the U.K. also quickly rejected the Trump administration’s accusations about forced labor.
“We do not agree with the premise of this Section 301 investigation on forced labor, and we had communicated this also to our US counterparts,” European Commission chief spokesperson Paula Pinho told reporters Friday. “We fully reject the notion that the EU could be considered as contributing to the global problem of forced labor.”
“In the absence of a domestic legal basis to sustain its protectionist trade policy, the USTR opted to manipulate an issue of great importance to human rights and to the struggle of workers around the world in order to accuse 59 countries and the European Union of unfair practices,” said the Brazilian government in a news release.
A spokesperson for the Japanese government said the new duties were “regrettable,” adding that Japan’s economy operates “in line with international rules.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit.
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