Trump sued over new tariffs, experts say courts may scrap them

President Donald Trump‘s global “liberation day” tariffs were struck down in the courts, shattering the cornerstone of his trade agenda. Some trade experts say his newest duties — which have already caught their first legal challenge — could meet the same fate.

The Trump administration on Friday imposed broad tariffs on goods from more than 80 countries, alleging they have failed to effectively prohibit the use of forced labor practices.

The latest tariffs — which apply to trade partners covering 99.4% of U.S. trade — were brought under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, which enables the government to impose import levies in response to unfair trade practices. Section 301 has been used many times across presidential administrations to threaten or impose tariffs — including against China during Trump’s first administration.

But Trump is “using the statute in a fundamentally different way,” Peter Harrell, visiting scholar at Georgetown University Law Center’s Institute of International Economic Law, told CNBC.

Section 301 was “never intended for the president to just wholesale rewrite the tariff schedule” and impose “permanent” duties, Harrell said, adding that Trump’s latest use of it could “for sure” be struck down in court.

Trump appears to see Section 301 as a key pathway for more tariffs. On Friday, he declared that the U.S. will “immediately” start a 301 investigation into the EU in retaliation for the hefty fines it has imposed on U.S. tech giants. It was the latest in a flurry of tariff actions Trump has taken in recent days, including slapping 25% duties on Brazilian imports — also via a 301 probe — and vowing 50% tariffs on some goods from Canada.

The legal battle has already begun. Just hours after the new tariffs took effect, two small businesses sued, arguing that the government is using Section 301 as a pretext to re-create the same global tariff regime that the Supreme Court torpedoed five months earlier.

The new lawsuit, filed in the U.S. Court of International Trade, notes that the Section 301 tariffs took effect right as another batch of tariffs expired.

Those lapsed duties, brought under Section 122 of the 1974 law, were announced by Trump mere hours after the Supreme Court struck down his global tariffs on Feb. 20. By using the Section 122 authority, those tariffs had a set end date.

The high court had ruled that the law Trump used to unilaterally slap tariffs on nearly every other country — the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA — did not actually allow him to impose the levies.

Friday’s lawsuit argues that Trump’s new tariffs, while ostensibly aimed at addressing forced labor practices, are “designed to preserve substantially the same broad tariff regime that this Court and the Supreme Court have held Congress did not authorize.”

Section 301 “is not a…