Victor Owen Schwartz Just Did What Congress Could Not.

Small Manhattan Business Wins Summary Judgment Invalidating Trump's Tariffs At The U.S. International Court of Trade.

Hello, readers. It’s good to be back.

Last month, on April 8 to be exact, we wrote a post hoping— in vain, sadly — that a privileged Senate resolution challenging Trump’s authority to launch his tariff wars, under the alleged authority of the International Economic Emergency Powers Act (IEEPA), would pass a floor vote. In true Senate fashion, the resolution never even got to a vote. And so we and the rest of the world watched helplessly as Trump unleashed havoc on the markets and international trade in general.

But Victor Owen Schwartz was having none of it. His small wine importing business in Manhattan would not survive the chaos of the tariff wars. so Victor, brave patriot that he was, filed a lawsuit in the U.S. International Court of Trade, V.O.S. Selections, Inc. v Donald J. Trump, seeking to set aside the tariffs on the grounds that the IEEPA did not grant the President a right to unilaterally issue trade regulations, because that authority belonged exclusively to the Congress. We wrote about him and his case back on April 14th, and expressed hope that if Congress wasn’t going to stand up for itself, Victor was going to stand up for himself and for his business and for small businesses across the country.

Today, the court agreed with Victor. In a thorough, well-crafted and carefully written decision, a panel of three judges from the Court of International Trade ruled that all of Trump’s tariffs “exceeded any authority granted to the President by the [IEEPA] to regulate importation by tariffs.” And the court went further; it ruled that there was no question of granting narrowly tailored relief as to only Victor and his fellow plaintiffs and that all tariffs enacted by Trump ostensibly pursuant to the IEEPA were invalid.

We’ll see an immediate appeal from Trump’s Justice Department, of course, but this is the biggest setback to Trump’s tariff wars that anyone who follows the economy could have ever wished for. Stay tuned — as the appeals work their way through the courts, we’ll be covering it right here. That’s all for now from Grifter News.