On a Monday morning in July, attorneys general from New York to Hawaii filed a single lawsuit that, if successful, could dismantle the broadest restructuring of American trade policy in half a century. The coalition of 25 states — joined by the governors of Kentucky and Pennsylvania — brought their case before the US Court of International Trade, targeting tariffs of between 10% and 12.5% that the Trump administration has imposed on goods from 60 trading partners, including the UK, Japan, Canada, Taiwan, and China. By the states' own calculation, those levies now cover 99.

4% of all US imports. The legal argument turns on a single, pointed accusation: that the new tariffs are a constitutional workaround. In February, the Supreme Court struck down the administration's earlier "Liberation Day" tariffs as unlawful. A temporary replacement set then expired.

The White House subsequently reached for Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 — a statute designed to penalise countries that tolerate goods produced with forced labour — to justify the new levies. New York Attorney General Letitia James characterised this manoeuvre bluntly, arguing that the president does not possess the authority to impose sweeping tariffs on whichever countries he chooses, regardless of how the justification is framed. The administration, for its part, maintains that it is acting on solid legal ground. White House spokesman Kush Desai argued that a foreign country's failure to prohibit imports made with forced labour constitutes an unreasonable burden on US commerce, and that Section 301 provides a legitimate mechanism to address it.

A separate suit, filed by the Liberty Justice Center on behalf of two small businesses, raises parallel concerns about executive overreach.