A federal appeals court offered US President Donald Trump a temporary reprieve from a ruling threatening to throw out the bulk of his sweeping tariff agenda, giving at least some hope to a White House now facing substantial new restrictions on its effort to rewrite the global trading order.
The administration celebrated the order from the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit as validating its vow to aggressively challenge a ruling issued on Wednesday night by the Court of International Trade blocking sweeping parts of Trump’s tariffs over his use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA).
White House officials also said that Trump has options to pursue similar tariffs through other authorities if appeals ultimately fall short, even as they planned to continue defending the legality of the IEEPA tariffs to the US Supreme Court.
Photo: Reuters
However, for a president eager to use trade policy to quickly reshape global commerce, other options would be more complicated and bind the threats he has able to wield in the negotiation process with other world leaders. Some alternative US tariff options are laborious to use and would take months to execute, while others are capped in scope and duration.
Trump hailed the appeals court ruling in a social media post on Thursday, while calling the original decision “so wrong and so political.” He claimed that seeking congressional approval for tariffs would hinder his trade agenda and “completely destroy Presidential Power.”
Despite the temporary stay, the possibility that the appeals court could ultimately back the original ruling and block Trump’s tariff policy hung heavy over the White House.
Separately, a second federal judge declared a number of Trump’s levies enacted using emergency powers unlawful, but limited his decision to the family-owned business that sued and delayed the order from taking effect for 14 days to allow the US Department of Justice time to appeal.
“America cannot function if President Trump — or any other president, for that matter — has their sensitive diplomatic or trade negotiations railroaded by activist judges,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said. “Ultimately, the Supreme Court must put an end to this for the sake of our constitution and our country.”
The original court ruling would have provided the Trump administration just 10 days to unwind the levies, but the new order laid out a briefing schedule that runs until June 9 to decide on the request for a longer-term stay. If granted — or if a subsequent appeal to the Supreme Court was granted — the tariffs could remain in place for months.
For all of the confidence on Trump’s team, Wednesday’s initial court ruling marked one of the biggest setbacks of the president’s second term. Trump campaigned on using tariffs to combat what he calls other nation’s unfair treatment of the US, and the emergency law gave him the fastest avenue to deliver on his pledge.
The ruling would reduce the effective US tariff rate to below 6 percent from a high of almost 27 percent last month, according to Bloomberg Economics calculations, an astronomical level that risked stagflation for the US.
The legal fight also threatens to inject even more uncertainty into a world economy already rattled by Trump’s ever-changing posture on import taxes. It might sap Trump’s leverage as his team negotiates with numerous trading partners seeking tariff relief.
The trade court decision on Wednesday blocked tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China, as well as a flat import tax on almost every US trading partner.
Trump invoked the IEEPA on the grounds that fentanyl and trade deficits are each emergencies necessitating the broad use of executive power. The court ruled that he went too far.
SEEKING CLARITY: Washington should not adopt measures that create uncertainties for ‘existing semiconductor investments,’ TSMC said referring to its US$165 billion in the US Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) told the US that any future tariffs on Taiwanese semiconductors could reduce demand for chips and derail its pledge to increase its investment in Arizona. “New import restrictions could jeopardize current US leadership in the competitive technology industry and create uncertainties for many committed semiconductor capital projects in the US, including TSMC Arizona’s significant investment plan in Phoenix,” the chipmaker wrote in a letter to the US Department of Commerce. TSMC issued the warning in response to a solicitation for comments by the department on a possible tariff on semiconductor imports by US President Donald Trump’s
The government has launched a three-pronged strategy to attract local and international talent, aiming to position Taiwan as a new global hub following Nvidia Corp’s announcement that it has chosen Taipei as the site of its Taiwan headquarters. Nvidia cofounder and CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) on Monday last week announced during his keynote speech at the Computex trade show in Taipei that the Nvidia Constellation, the company’s planned Taiwan headquarters, would be located in the Beitou-Shilin Technology Park (北投士林科技園區) in Taipei. Huang’s decision to establish a base in Taiwan is “primarily due to Taiwan’s talent pool and its strength in the semiconductor
An earnings report from semiconductor giant and artificial intelligence (AI) bellwether Nvidia Corp takes center stage for Wall Street this week, as stocks hit a speed bump of worries over US federal deficits driving up Treasury yields. US equities pulled back last week after a torrid rally, as investors turned their attention to tax and spending legislation poised to swell the US government’s US$36 trillion in debt. Long-dated US Treasury yields rose amid the fiscal worries, with the 30-year yield topping 5 percent and hitting its highest level since late 2023. Stocks were dealt another blow on Friday when US President Donald
UNCERTAINTY: Investors remain worried that trade negotiations with Washington could go poorly, given Trump’s inconsistency on tariffs in his second term, experts said The consumer confidence index this month fell for a ninth consecutive month to its lowest level in 13 months, as global trade uncertainties and tariff risks cloud Taiwan’s economic outlook, a survey released yesterday by National Central University found. The biggest decline came from the timing for stock investments, which plunged 11.82 points to 26.82, underscoring bleak investor confidence, it said. “Although the TAIEX reclaimed the 21,000-point mark after the US and China agreed to bury the hatchet for 90 days, investors remain worried that the situation would turn sour later,” said Dachrahn Wu (吳大任), director of the university’s Research Center for
RSS