Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield said Thursday that President Trump was attempting to find a “loophole” to instate global tariffs.
The Trump administration has argued that under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), which Trump enacted in February, the White House can set and dismantle trade rates through sole executive power.
“He used an emergency power. No president has ever used that power, and that’s why he got struck down, and he’s going to get struck down again,” Rayfield told NewsNation.
The Oregon attorney general said Trump wants to bypass traditional Title 19 laws regulating tariffs to “skirt the sideboards, the safeguards for our economy that Congress put in place.”
“He doesn’t want to do those. Those have limits on terms. Those have limits on the period in which that Trump… these tariffs can get administered,” he said.
“So he’s trying to do this in a backwards way and find a loophole. And the judges said, ‘No.’”
Two federal judges ruled to block Trump’s tariffs but an appeals court temporarily paused their injunctions until legal arguments from both the government and plaintiffs could be heard.
IEEPA is a federal law that grants the president power to regulate international trade if they’ve declared a national emergency in response to an “unusual” and “extraordinary” threat.
Multiple attorneys general and lawmakers have suggested that Trump has overstepped his authority by implementing “Liberation Day” levies on many of the United States’ trade partners without a viable cause.
Bipartisan lawmakers have taken issue with slated duties due to their potential impact on the national and global economy in addition to price increases for consumers.
