By Habib Sabet/VTDigger
Vermont Attorney General Charity Clark is joining the top prosecutors of 11 other states in a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of President Donald Trump’s tariff policies, the Attorney General’s office announced Wednesday, April 23.
The attorneys general, who filed the lawsuit Wednesday in the U.S. Court of International Trade in New York City, argue that Trump’s four executive orders imposing tariffs on imports from other countries violate Article I of the U.S. Constitution, which assigns Congress, not the president, the “Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises.”
“President Trump’s illegal tariffs will harm Vermont’s businesses and consumers,” Clark said in a Wednesday press release announcing the suit. “I’m suing the Trump Administration for the 10th time over these illegal tariffs to protect working Vermonters, small businesses, and our economy.”
The lawsuit requests a preliminary and permanent injunction blocking U.S. Customs and Border Patrol from enforcing the tariffs.
Since taking office, Trump has repeatedly invoked the International Economic Emergency Powers Act while issuing a flurry of executive orders unilaterally declaring levies on imported goods.
But the lawsuit argues that the 1970s-era law doesn’t grant the president the authority to impose sweeping tariffs under any circumstances.
Moreover, the attorneys general argue in the suit, Trump has trotted out the once-obscure law under false pretenses, claiming that the tariffs are aimed at countering various alleged national security threats, such as illegal immigration and cross-border fentanyl smuggling.
“Yet over the last three months, the President has imposed, modified, escalated, and suspended tariffs by executive order, memoranda, social media post, and agency decree,” the lawsuit states. “These edicts reflect a national trade policy that now hinges on the President’s whims rather than the sound exercise of his lawful authority.”
The lawsuit is the latest in a string of legal challenges made to the Trump Administration’s tariff policy in recent weeks.
Earlier this month, California filed a lawsuit similarly questioning the constitutionality of Trump’s trade-related executive orders.
Members of the Blackfeet Nation in Montana and two non-profits — the New Civil Liberties Alliance and the Liberty Justice Center — have also all filed lawsuits opposing various aspects of the administration’s tariff policy in recent weeks.
