With courts threatening to unravel his global trade war, Donald Trump took to Truth Social on Sunday to send a not-so-subtle signal to the judges standing in his way.
The president suggested he expects an appeal to go his way following a week of legal whiplash over his signature economic policy. On Wednesday, a federal trade court struck down his sweeping “Liberation Day” tariffs on global trade partners, ruling he had overstepped his constitutional authority. But just a day later, an appeals court put that decision on hold while it reviews the case.
Trump catastrophized in his post that a court loss would spell economic disaster.
“If the Courts somehow rule against us on Tariffs, which is not expected, that would allow other Countries to hold our Nation hostage with their anti-American Tariffs that they would use against us,” he wrote. “This would mean the Economic ruination of the United States of America!”
The initial ruling came in response to a lawsuit from small businesses that said the tariffs put their operations at existential risk by driving up costs associated with importing goods.
The U.S. Court of International Trade sided with the plaintiffs, with the three-judge panel concluding that the 1977 law Trump relied on to impose the tariffs did not give him “unbounded authority” to do so.
Trump and his mouthpieces have characteristically lashed out at the judiciary in response. His White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, on Thursday cast the panel as “activist judges”—despite the fact that two of the three were appointed by Republican presidents, including one by Trump himself.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has also reaffirmed the administration’s intent to push forward with the tariff policy—via other means if necessary—regardless of the legal setback.
“We’re going to take that up to higher courts, the president’s going to win like he always does. But rest assured, tariffs are not going away,” Lutnick said in an interview on Fox News Sunday. “He has so many other authorities, that even in the weird and unusual circumstance where this was taken away, we just bring on another or another or another.”
Trump has spent months framing his tariffs as a bargaining chip to force overseas trade partners to make new agreements. To date, the administration has finalized only one such agreement—with the United Kingdom—and a separate 90-day truce with China to roll back steep tariffs on both sides.
A federal appeals court has set a June 5 deadline for plaintiffs in the trade court case to respond and June 9 for the administration.
