Nonprofit in tariff challenge case hits back at Trump

By Brett Rowland
The Center Square

A nonprofit group challenging President Donald Trump’s tariff authority in front of the U.S. Supreme Court said Thursday that Trump’s criticism of the group was off base.

Liberty Justice Center, representing five small businesses challenging Trump’s tariff authority, noted that it is an American nonprofit representing U.S. businesses fighting U.S. taxes.

On Wednesday, Trump said the lawyers who challenge his power to impose tariffs are “aligned with foreign nations.”

A spokesperson for Liberty Justice Center, a Texas-based group, said it is focused on America.

“Founded in 2011, the Liberty Justice Center is a proud American nonprofit that defends economic liberty, private property rights, free speech, and other fundamental American rights,” a Liberty Justice Center spokesperson said. “Our concerns have nothing to do with foreign nations and everything to do with protecting American small businesses, consumers, and the U.S. Constitution.”

Liberty Justice Center is one of several parties involved in the case. In addition to the small businesses that Liberty Justice Center represents, a group of Democrat-led states and two education businesses also challenged the president’s tariff authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977.

“This is exactly why the Liberty Justice Center brought this case,” a spokesperson for the group said. “The Constitution vests the power to tax and impose tariffs with Congress – not the President. Our founders designed a system of separated powers to prevent exactly this kind of unilateral action. For nearly 250 years, that balance has preserved both liberty and accountability. If we fail to defend it now, we risk losing the constitutional safeguards that have defined our Republic since its founding.”

In his second term, Trump used the 1977 law to reorder global trade through tariffs to give U.S. businesses an advantage at home. Using tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, Trump put import duties of at least 10% on every nation that does business with the U.S. Some nations, including many U.S. allies, face much higher tariff rates.

“Like all Americans, we are endowed with the right to take our government to court when it violates the law or the Constitution. In this case, it did both. As the U.S. Court of International Trade and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit have held, the President lacks the authority to unilaterally issue sweeping tariffs, which are catastrophic to American small businesses like the ones we represent,” the spokesperson said. “Tariffs are taxes, and the Constitution grants only Congress – not the President – the power to impose taxes. These tariffs are unconstitutional, and, if allowed to stand, would set a dangerous precedent for future administrations of either party to declare unjustified emergency power and run roughshod over the other branches of government.”