Trump advisers defend tariffs amid legal fight, insisting they're 'not going away'
President Donald Trump's top economic advisers maintained confidence on Sunday that the "tariffs are not going away," as a key tenet of Trump's policy agenda hangs in legal limbo.
"Rest assured, tariffs are not going away," Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said on "Fox News Sunday," days after a federal court ruled that Trump overstepped his authority when he imposed the sweeping duties.
A federal appeals court later granted the Trump administration's request to temporarily pause the ruling, giving the White House some breathing room, but officials now stare down a potentially arduous legal battle.
The looming legal fight, which could ultimately wind up before the U.S. Supreme Court, injects uncertainty into Trump's tariff plan, which has upended the global economy in the weeks since his initial April 2 announcement of so-called reciprocal tariffs.
Trump's advisers insist, however, that the tariffs will stay in place in the face of the legal challenges — or the administration will find new ways to implement them.
National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett said Sunday that he is "very confident" that the judges on the nation's top court would back Trump's tariffs.
"We are very confident that the judges will uphold this law. And so I think that's Plan A. And we're very, very confident that Plan A is all we're ever going to need," he said on ABC News' "This Week."
But he added that if the tariffs are blocked, "we'll have other alternatives that we can pursue as well to make sure that we make America trade fair again," without giving specifics on what that route would look like.
"There's all these laws that your listeners don't want to listen to that are alternative ways to pursue what we're doing," he said.
The U.S. Court of International Trade on Wednesday blocked Trump's tariffs, ruling that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), which Trump invoked to impose the tariffs, does not authorize a president to levy universal duties on imports. To justify the tariffs, Trump said that the "large and persistent annual U.S. goods trade deficits" constituted a national emergency.
The Trump administration swiftly appealed the ruling, and a federal appeals court granted their request for a temporary stay.
It's not clear how the nation's highest court would eventually rule on Trump's tariffs, but it is not a given that the conservative-majority Supreme Court would automatically side with the president, POLITICO reports.
The White House has argued that a court ruling overturning Trump's tariffs would undermine his negotiating leverage with other nations.
"A ruling that narrows IEEPA would have ripple effects across every domain in which economic instruments are used for strategic effect," Lutnick said during a deposition last month.
Trump said Sunday: "If the Courts somehow rule against" the U.S. on tariffs, it would "allow other Countries to hold our Nation hostage with their anti-American Tariffs that they would use against us."
"This would mean the Economic ruination of the United States of America!" he wrote on Truth Social.
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