White House calls for Supreme Court to rein in activist judges

Donald Trump’s tariffs have resumed - for now - but the White House has accused activist judges of trying to usurp the US President’s authority and called for the Supreme Court to intervene.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt speaks during the daily briefing in the Brady Briefing Room of the White House in Washington, DC, on May 29. Picture: AFP

The White House has accused the Court of International Trade of abusing its power to “usurp the authority” of Donald Trump after it ruled the worldwide Liberation Day tariffs were imposed by the US President illegally.

The accusation came as a federal appeals court put a temporary hold or administrative stay on the Court of International Trade’s ruling - meaning the sweeping tariffs will remain in place for now.

Speaking on Thursday local time, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt warned that America “cannot function” if the US President had his “sensitive diplomatic or trade negotiations railroaded by activist judges.”

She called on the Supreme Court to “put an end to this for sake of our Constitution and our country.”

The warning came as another federal court in Washington also ruled against the tariffs imposed by Mr Trump under the The International Economic Emergency Powers Act of 1977, with US District Judge Rudolph Contreras saying the case was not about whether tariffs were a legitimate instrument of policy.

“It is about whether IEEPA enables the President to unilaterally impose, revoke, pause, reinstate, and adjust tariffs to reorder the global economy,” he said. “The Court agrees with Plaintiffs that it does not.”

That ruling came after three judges on the US Court of International Trade - Gary Katzmann, Timothy Reif, and Jane Restani - found on Wednesday local time that the IEEPA did not delegate an “unbounded tariff authority to the President.”

The three judges were appointed by Presidents Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Ronald Reagan respectively.

Ms Leavitt warned that there was a “troubling and dangerous trend of unelected judges inserting themselves into the presidential decision-making process.”

She said that Mr Trump had imposed universal tariffs and reciprocal tariffs on April 2 to “address the extraordinary threat to our national security and economy posed by large and persistent annual US goods trade deficits.”

“The courts should have no role here,” she said. “President Trump is in the process of rebalancing America’s trading agreements with the entire world, bringing tens of billions of dollars in tariff revenues to our country and finally ending the United States of America from being ripped off.’

“These judges are threatening to undermine the credibility of the United States on the world stage. The administration has already filed an emergency motion for a stay pending appeal and an immediate administrative stay to strike down this egregious decision.”

Earlier on Thursday local time, the Justice Department had asked the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to freeze Wednesday’s ruling from the Court of International Trade while it pursued an appeal.

“This Court should immediately stay that judgment, which is rife with legal error and up-ends President Trump’s efforts to eliminate our exploding trade deficit and reorient the global economy on an equal footing,” it said.

“Absent at least interim relief from this Court, the United States plans to seek emergency relief from the Supreme Court tomorrow to avoid the irreparable national-security and economic harms at stake.”

The Federal Circuit - an intermediate appeals court in Washington - has asked the group of companies that challenged the tariffs to file a written brief before June 5 laying out their arguments. It also instructed the Justice Department to reply to that brief by June 9.

The Court of International Trade decision to block the tariffs imposed by Mr Trump under the IEEPA captured the “Liberation Day” reciprocal tariffs, the ten per cent universal baseline tariffs - which includes Australia - and the fentanyl-related tariffs on China, Canada, and Mexico.

However, the tariffs authorised under section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 remain unaffected. These include the 25 per cent steel, aluminium and automotive tariffs imposed by Mr Trump.

Ms Leavitt used the press briefing on Thursday local time to urge Senate Republicans to “quickly pass the One Big Beautiful Bill” containing Mr Trump’s tax cuts and spending agenda.

There is a risk that the recent court rulings throwing Mr Trump’s tariffs into jeopardy may deepen resistance among the GOP fiscal hawks in the US Congress given hundreds of billions in extra revenue can no longer be assumed.

“I also want to take the opportunity to debunk some false claims that have been circling in the press about this bill,” she said. “The blatantly wrong claim that the One Big Beautiful Bill increases the deficit is based on the Congressional Budget Office and other score keepers who use shoddy assumptions.”

“For example, just before Congress enacted the original Trump tax cuts at the of 2017 the same CBO projected that growth would average a mere 1.9 per cent over the next ten years. However, by 2019 actual growth had surged to 3.4 per cent once the Trump tax cuts went into effect.”

Ms Leavitt said the American economy was on track to “boom like never before after the One Big Beautiful Bill is passed” given the administration was looking to secure the “largest middle class tax cut in history, massive deregulation and the most aggressive domestic energy exploration ever.”

With the WSJ