25 States Challenge Trump Administration Over New Sweeping Import Tariffs

According to Al Jazeera, a coalition of 25 Democratic-led states filed suit Monday in the US Court of International Trade against the Trump administration's new double-digit tariffs on 60 trading partners — a regime that now touches more than 99 percent of US imports. We have watched this movie before. The administration lost the legal argument at the Supreme Court in February; it is now rerunning the same wall of levies through a quieter statute, betting that the moral weight of "forced labor" will outrun the scrutiny.

The Legal Shell Game

The new tariffs landed days after temporary 10 percent worldwide duties expired at midnight on July 24. Having lost the IEEPA fight — the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act the Court ruled does not authorize sweeping import taxes — the White House turned to Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 to reimpose essentially the same structure. States including New York and Oregon argue, as reported by Al Jazeera, that "forced labor" is functioning as a pretext. The complaint echoes two earlier small-business suits making the same structural point: when the Supreme Court tells you no, you do not get to find a friendlier statute and try again.

New York Attorney General Letitia James put it plainly: "After losing at the Supreme Court, the administration is once again trying to illegally raise taxes on families and businesses with a new round of tariffs." White House spokesman Kush Desai countered that the duties are a lawful response to unfair trade, calling forced labor in foreign supply chains an unreasonable burden on US commerce. Both statements are on the record. Only one of them describes a policy with any evidence behind it.

What This Actually Costs Us

Strip away the rhetoric and the mechanism is mechanical. Tariffs are taxes on imports — taxes the suing states themselves frame as costs on "families and businesses." When the duties touch 99 percent of imports, that cost is structural, not incidental. This is not a manufacturing strategy. It is a regressive extraction dressed in the language of moral trade. The states argued it directly: "a sweeping tax on imports would do nothing to address the real problems of forced labour around the world." Climate and labor policy that took the problem seriously would invest in supply-chain transparency, fund real enforcement, and rebuild domestic capacity through public capital — not punitive duties that tax the same working households the states claim to defend.

What to Watch

The Court of International Trade holds the timeline now. Track whether the coalition moves for a preliminary injunction; the Monday filing is the opening move, not the final one. Watch the refund process the Supreme Court ruling forced the administration to set up for the original IEEPA tariffs — that recovered revenue is precisely why a new income stream was needed before July 24 expired. And follow the small-business suits running the same legal theory without state politics wrapped around them; they strip the partisan frame off a question that was always structural. Forced labor in global supply chains is real, prosecutable, and worth fighting. It is also being used, on the record, as cover for a tax regime that already failed its constitutional test.