New York Attorney General Letitia James and Governor Kathy Hochul today announced that New York and a coalition of 11 other states are suing the Trump administration for illegally imposing unprecedented tax hikes on Americans in the form of tariffs issued under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA).
The Trump administration’s IEEPA tariffs raise taxes on imports from nearly every country on Earth, including America’s closest allies and trading partners, and they have already caused severe economic damage.
The lawsuit, filed by Attorney General James and a coalition of attorneys general, argues that Congress has not granted the president the authority to impose these tariffs and therefore the administration violated the law by imposing them through executive orders, social media posts, and agency orders.
The coalition seeks a court order halting these IEEPA tariffs, including the worldwide tariffs that were paused on April 9, and preventing the Trump administration from enforcing or implementing them.
“The president does not have the power to raise taxes on a whim, but that’s exactly what President Trump has been doing with these tariffs,” said Attorney General James. “Donald Trump promised that he would lower prices and ease the cost of living, but these illegal tariffs will have the exact opposite effect on American families.
His tariffs are unlawful and if not stopped, they will lead to more inflation, unemployment, and economic damage.”
“President Trump’s reckless tariffs have skyrocketed costs for consumers and unleashed economic chaos across the country. New York is standing up to fight back against the largest federal tax hike in American history,” said Governor Kathy Hochul. “Attorney General James and I are partnering on this litigation on behalf of New York consumers, because we can’t let President Trump push our country into a recession.”
At most, the IEEPA allows the president to impose tariffs in response to extraordinary threats or a specific emergency. However, since February, President Trump has been unilaterally imposing sweeping tariffs against America’s closest trading partners.
These tariffs expanded in a series of announcements in April to now cover nearly every country worldwide, including places that are not involved in international trade, such as the Heard and McDonald Islands, which have no known human inhabitants.
In addition to the severe economic damage that President Trump’s tariffs have already caused, the coalition warns they could cause even more destruction if allowed to continue. The lawsuit argues the IEEPA tariffs will increase unemployment, raise inflation, and threaten Americans’ wages by slowing economic growth.
The president’s tariffs will harm the states and their residents by making important goods ranging from electronics to building materials more expensive and scarce.
These costs will severely impact New Yorkers. Economists estimate the increased tariffs will cost the average family thousands of dollars per year, and a report from the New York City Comptroller estimated that even a mild recession caused by the tariffs would lead to over 35,000 lost jobs in New York City alone. New York state agencies could end up paying over $100 million in extra costs due to tariffs increasing prices.
Retaliatory tariffs imposed by Canada on the hundreds of millions of dollars in electricity that New York imports every year would cause New Yorkers’ energy bills to spike. Across the state, small businesses that rely on imports are already reeling from the threat of higher prices and uncertainty caused by the administration’s policies.
In Central New York, the Cortland Standard, one of the oldest family-owned newspapers in the country, announced it would cease publication in part due to an expected tariff on newsprint.
The lawsuit, filed in the United States Court of International Trade, asserts that President Trump has no authority to impose tariffs as he has. While the president has declared emergencies and invoked IEEPA to justify these tariffs, not once has any other president used IEEPA to impose tariffs like this in the five decades since it became law.
As the coalition argues in the lawsuit, the law was not designed to allow the president to unilaterally impose worldwide tariffs indiscriminately. In addition, the coalition argues that the Trump administration has overstepped its authority and violated the Constitution and the Administrative Procedure Act by imposing these tariffs.
With this lawsuit, the coalition is seeking a court order declaring the Trump administration’s IEEPA tariff orders to be in violation of the law and ordering the administration to stop implementing or enforcing these tariffs.
Joining Attorney General James in filing this lawsuit are the attorneys general of Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, and Vermont
