Dozen states sue Trump in bid to block new tariffs

A dozen states sued President Donald Trump and his administration on Wednesday, seeking a court order declaring that his new tariffs on foreign imports are illegal.

“The president does not have the power to raise taxes on a whim, but that’s exactly what President Trump has been doing with these tariffs,” New York Attorney General Letitia James said in a statement on the lawsuit.

The suit was filed in the U.S. Court of International Trade in Washington, D.C.

It argues that a president has no authority to arbitrarily impose tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, the U.S. law that Trump has cited in executing his tariff policy.

The civil complaint comes more than a week after a group of five small businesses filed a similar lawsuit against Trump in the same court, challenging the legality of the new tariffs on the same grounds.

In addition to New York, the plaintiffs in the new lawsuit include Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Minnesota, New Mexico, Oregon and Vermont.

“The Constitution assigns to Congress, not the President, the ‘Power To lay and
collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises,’ ” the suit says.

“By claiming the authority to impose immense and ever-changing tariffs on whatever goods entering the United States he chooses, for whatever reason he finds convenient to declare an emergency, the President has upended the constitutional order and brought chaos to the American economy,” the suit says.

This is breaking news. Please refresh for updates.