Retail giant files lawsuit against Trump admin, asking for ‘full refund’
Warehouse giant Costco has filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration, seeking a full refund on tariffs that the company says were wrongly put in place by the president.
The case, which was filed on Friday in the U.S. Court of International Trade, focuses on high tariffs, or import taxes, that President Donald Trump started placing on goods from several countries, including China, Mexico and Canada, earlier this year.
The lawsuit states that Congress, not the president, can set tariffs and therefore Trump exceeded the authority granted to him by the 1977 emergency law called the “International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA).
“The text of IEEPA does not use the word ‘tariff’ or any term of equivalent meaning,” the court document reads. “IEEPA was first enacted in 1977 and has been amended several times, but it has never been amended to authorize, or used by any other president to impose, tariffs.”
Kush Desai, a spokesman for the White House, told the New York Times that the “economic consequences of the failure to uphold President Trump’s lawful tariffs are enormous and this suit highlights that fact. The White House looks forward to the Supreme Court’s speedy and proper resolution of this matter.”
The act states that the “IEEPA gives the President broad authorities to address declared emergencies concerning certain ‘unusual and extraordinary’ threats to national security, foreign policy, or the economy, including the authority to ‘regulate’ or ‘prohibit’ imports.”
Costco is arguing that the chaotic and frequently shifting nature of these IEEPA duties, is the best evidence that the president was acting without proper legal limits, and is what made the global markets to gyrate.
In the past, Trump has argued that the tariffs have helped the government bring in “hundreds of billions of dollars,” the New York Times wrote.
Importers like the wine and spirits company V.O.S. Selections and Learning Resources, Inc. an educational toymaker has secured major rulings in the past against the administration in lower federal courts, the Times wrote.
Costco is asking the court to declare that tariffs are illegal, order the government to stop collecting the tariffs from the company and force the U.S. government to refund all of the IEEPA duties Costco has already paid, plus interest, the records show.
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments early November and plans to issue a decision in the near future.
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