Trump’s latest global tariffs face trade court challenge

President Donald Trump‘s near-global tariff policy is being challenged in federal court — again.

A panel of three judges at the U.S. Court of International Trade in Manhattan is hearing arguments Wednesday morning from a group of small businesses and Democratic-led states who say Trump’s sweeping “Section 301” tariffs overstep the law.

It’s the third time in less than two years that the courts have been asked to intervene against the president’s attempt to impose sweeping tariffs on the vast majority of U.S. imports.

The latest tariffs impose 10% or 12.5% rates on goods from 86 countries, covering 99.4% of U.S. imports. The Trump administration said they were imposed in response to the targeted countries failing to effectively enforce bans on the trade of goods produced using forced-labor practices.

But an attorney for the challengers said at the start of Wednesday’s hearing that a “constellation of factors” show the government’s justification was a “pretext” in pursuit of reviving Trump’s worldwide tariff regime.

“We know this was not the only reason that they did this,” the attorney said.

One of the judges pushed back. “So what?” she asked, probing whether the government having additional motivations for the tariffs was enough to rule against them.

The plaintiffs’ attorney replied that the administration’s “unprecedented” use of Section 301 — slapping tariffs of similar size on dozens of economies in “one fell swoop” after a truncated investigation — does not satisfy the statute’s requirements.

Specifically, the attorney argued that the government must show that each country’s trade practices are unreasonable and impose a burden on U.S. commerce. “It’s the lack of the country-specific findings” that violates the statute, he told the panel.

The hearing began at 10 a.m. ET. The judges called a short break around 11 a.m. ET.

The day that ruling came down, Trump announced a worldwide 10% tariff under a different statute known as Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974. That authority only allowed the tariffs to last for 150 days — but in that interval, the federal trade court ruled against them. An appeals court paused that ruling, allowing them to stay in effect for their duration.

Right as those tariffs expired in July, the Trump administration imposed new duties under Section 301 of the same 1974 trade law.

The move “is the most sweeping international labor rights action the…