Los Angeles. An alliance of 12 states of the United States launched on Wednesday a legal challenge to tariffs imposed by Donald Trump, given that its Democratic leaders consider that the Republican President could not impose them without the approval of the Congress.
The group, which includes Arizona, Oregon, New York and Minnesota, thus takes up a tactic launched by California, which presented a similar procedure last week.
“The demential tariff plan of President Trump is not only reckless from the economic point of view, it is also illegal,” said Arizona’s attorney general, Kris Mayes.
Since his return to the White House in January, Trump has dropped world bags by questioning decades of free trade.
He launched a commercial war against China and imposed 10% tariffs on products from dozens of countries around the world. The president also threatens to introduce much more punitive tariffs.
But according to the lawsuit filed on Wednesday, the 1977 law invoked by the Republican billionaire does not allow him to use emergency measures to impose tariffs, a power that the US Constitution attributes to Congress.
“When the authority to impose substantial tariffs and always changing to all the products that he chooses in the United States, for any reason he considers timely to declare an emergency, the president has altered the constitutional order and has plunged the US economy in chaos,” details the lawsuit, presented before the United States International Trade Court.
Trump states that, in the long term, its protectionist policy will bring industrial production back to the United States.
But, in the short term, it is creating great uncertainty and it is likely that it causes an increase in prices for consumers and the loss of jobs, according to many economists.
Last week, the State of California challenged the tariffs imposed by Trump before court. His governor Gavin Newsom compared rates with “the worst autogol in the history of this country.”
“One of the most self -destructive things we have lived in the modern history of the United States,” said Newsom.
