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New Mexico Treasurer Laura Montoya is urging the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold lower court rulings that found President Donald Trump’s tariffs on foreign countries to be unlawful uses of executive power.
“Though he may falsely believe he’s above the law, the courts and the Constitution say otherwise. The Supreme Court must uphold the lower court rulings and put an end to Trump’s abuse of power and economic overreach,” Montoya said on Friday in a press release issued by her office.
Montoya’s statement comes as Trump has appealed a ruling that the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit handed down last month in a lawsuit that the New Mexico Department of Justice was a plaintiff in, which found Trump improperly exercised executive power when he invoked the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to levy tariffs on goods from other countries without congressional approval.
The IEEPA authorizes a president to impose economic sanctions on a country “to deal with any unusual and extraordinary threat, which has its source in whole or substantial part outside the United States, to the national security, foreign policy, or economy of the United States, if the President declares a national emergency with respect to such threat.”
The legislation goes on to say that a president can only use that power to deal with “an unusual and extraordinary threat.” A series of justifications has been used by the Trump administration to impose tariffs on foreign countries, ranging from fentanyl trafficking and an influx of illegal border crossings to a persistently high trade deficit with other nations.
Critics of the tariffs say that the tariffs would not address the issues of illegal immigration or drug trafficking, and that economic justifications given for the tariffs, such as the U.S. trade deficit, do not meet the threshold of an “unusual and extraordinary threat” necessary for Trump to bypass Congress and impose the tariffs.
Montoya argued that Trump is unilaterally setting far-reaching economic policy without congressional approval, as it is Congress, not the executive branch, that has the authority under the Constitution to impose tariffs. She added that allowing Trump’s tariffs to remain in place sets a dangerous precedent that undermines both the U.S. economy and democracy.
“Even if the Supreme Court ultimately finds these tariffs to be unlawful, the damage they’ve already done will be difficult to reverse,” Treasurer Montoya stated. She also stated that the additional levies imposed on goods coming into the country have come at great costs to consumers.
“Not only have his tariffs been found to be unlawful by lower courts, they’re also a direct assault on working families and small businesses already financially slammed by Trump’s numerous other policy failures.”
Trump has defended the use of tariffs as a cornerstone of his economic policy to try and maximize U.S. power. In a post on social media last week, Trump warned that if the court strikes down his tariffs, the United States will become “a third-world Nation with no hope of greatness again.”
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