Two small businesses filed lawsuits challenging President Trump's sweeping new tariffs on imports from 60 trading partners, arguing the administration stretched a decades-old trade law well past its legal limits.
A spice importer and a high-end watch retailer went to court Friday, represented by the Liberty Justice Center, the same libertarian legal outfit that helped defeat Trump's earlier emergency tariffs at the Supreme Court. The new complaint targets the administration's Section 301 tariffs, which impose surcharges of 10 to 12.5 percent on goods from 60 countries and cover 99 percent of U.S. imports.
The lawsuit's core argument is straightforward: Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 requires the government to identify specific unfair trade practices by specific countries before slapping tariffs on their goods. The plaintiffs, Burlap & Barrel, a spice and e-commerce business, and Collective Horology, a retailer of high-end watches, say the administration skipped that step and imposed what amounts to a blanket tax on nearly all foreign trade.
The administration justified the new levies as a response to forced labor overseas. U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer announced the tariffs Thursday after what the administration described as a months-long investigation into forced labor practices, including public comments and two rounds of hearings. The tariffs arrived just as the president's previous duties, imposed under a separate temporary authority, were expiring.
That timing is the heart of the plaintiffs' complaint. Sara Albrecht, chairman and CEO of the Liberty Justice Center, framed the move as a legal shell game. Albrecht told reporters:
"Forced labor is morally indefensible, but an important objective does not give the government permission to ignore the law. The administration allowed one global tariff to expire and immediately replaced it with another under a different statute. Changing the statute doesn't change the law."
The complaint itself puts the legal objection in sharper terms. Section 301, the lawsuit states, "is not a freestanding authorization to tax substantially all imports from substantially all trading partners." The law, the plaintiffs argue, demands a country-by-country analysis, not a sweeping assertion that forced labor is bad everywhere.
The filing adds that the statute "does not permit USTR to substitute a generalized assertion that forced labor is harmful, unfair, or economically distortive worldwide for the statute's required determination concerning an identified foreign act, policy, or practice and its burden or restriction on United States commerce."
Trump's broader tariff strategy has faced repeated legal and political friction since his return to office. The Supreme Court struck down his earlier emergency tariffs, and the Liberty Justice Center was part of the winning legal team in that case. Now the same firm is back, arguing the replacement tariffs suffer from the same fundamental problem: overreach.
But this round may not fall as easily. Legal experts say Section 301 tariffs are historically harder to challenge in court. Similar tariffs imposed on China during Trump's first term survived legal challenges, and the statute gives the executive branch broader procedural footing than the emergency powers used before.
Patrick Childress, a partner at the law firm Holland & Knight and a former U.S. trade official, offered a blunt assessment of what businesses should expect. "These tariffs will be with us for the long haul," Childress said. He noted that affected countries would need to prove they have enforced policy changes to Washington's satisfaction before the tariffs come off, a bar that could take years to clear.
That distinction matters for the millions of American businesses that import goods. The earlier emergency tariffs operated under temporary authority and were vulnerable to constitutional challenge. Section 301 tariffs can last longer, but they come with their own legal requirement: the government must show that specific foreign acts, policies, or practices burden or restrict U.S. commerce. The plaintiffs say the administration failed that test by lumping 60 countries together under one broad rationale.
The economic consequences of the administration's tariff agenda have already drawn scrutiny from across the political spectrum. A Pence-linked foundation recently estimated that Trump's tariffs cost 75,000 manufacturing jobs in their first year, a finding that undercuts the argument that broad import duties protect American workers.
The challenge filed by Burlap & Barrel and Collective Horology was not alone. A second lawsuit also landed in the Court of International Trade on Friday, according to the New York Post. That earlier reporting noted the Liberty Justice Center had also represented a toy company, Learning Resources, in related tariff litigation. The court previously ordered the government to refund at least $130 billion in tariffs already paid by importers under the struck-down emergency duties, a staggering sum that shows the financial stakes of these trade fights.
The White House has not responded to requests for comment on the new lawsuits. In earlier rounds of litigation, a White House spokesperson defended the tariffs as a legitimate use of presidential authority to address the country's trade deficits.
Trump has used tariffs as leverage across a range of disputes, from threatening Canada over wildfire smoke to pressuring NATO allies on defense spending. He has also used tariff relief as a diplomatic tool, lifting whiskey tariffs during a state visit with King Charles. The pattern reveals a president who views import duties as a multipurpose instrument of national policy, but the courts keep asking whether Congress ever gave him that kind of authority.
No one in this lawsuit disputes that forced labor is a genuine problem in global supply chains. The plaintiffs say so explicitly. The legal question is narrower and more consequential: does the Trade Act of 1974 allow the president to impose a near-universal tariff on 60 countries based on a general finding about forced labor, without identifying the specific practices of each trading partner?
The administration says yes. It points to months of investigation, public comment periods, and two rounds of hearings as evidence it followed the law. The plaintiffs say that process was window dressing for a predetermined outcome, a way to replace one set of struck-down tariffs with another under a different legal label.
If the courts agree with the challengers, the administration will have lost its second major tariff authority in less than two years. If the courts side with the government, businesses that depend on imports will face double-digit surcharges with no clear end date and no country-specific path to relief.
Either way, the case will test whether Section 301, a statute written in 1974 for targeted trade disputes, can bear the weight of a policy that covers nearly every import entering the United States.
Conservatives who support tough trade enforcement should welcome that question. A president who fights unfair trade practices within the law is stronger than one who has to keep swapping statutes every time a court says no.
