Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 sets a specific yardstick: investigate the practice, build the record, then act. Twenty-five states argue the Trump administration threw out that yardstick to fast-track tariffs it wanted anyway.
New York led the coalition’s lawsuit filed Monday in the U.S. Court of International Trade, arguing that single-country Section 301 probes normally run close to a year. This round covered 59 countries and the EU, from a March announcement to a July 31 tariff order. Four months for what usually takes twelve.
The target is the 10% and 12.5% duties Trump imposed on 60 economies by presidential memorandum on July 23, justified as punishment for countries that won’t ban forced-labor imports.
I’ve read enough 301 dockets to know the timeline gap is the real tell. Rushing the record from a year to four months is exactly what feeds an arbitrary-and-capricious argument, and it’s the same procedural weakness that sank the administration’s tariffs at the Supreme Court. Attorney General Letitia James leaned on that precedent directly: “After losing at the Supreme Court, the administration is once again trying to illegally raise taxes on families and businesses.”
The White House isn’t backing off. Spokesperson Kush Desai called the forced-labor findings a lawful response to unreasonable trade practices, per CNBC. It’s the same statute in the same court.
Worth reading the Section 301 investigation record before you assume this one survives review.
— Rebecca Lauren