A group of conservative legal heavyweights — including some who once defended Donald Trump against his criminal prosecutions — are now urging a federal judge to strike down the former president’s sweeping tariff policy.
“Congress, not the president, has the power to impose tariffs,” they wrote in an amicus brief filed this week in a lawsuit brought by two small businesses that design educational toys and pet items, NOTUS reported Friday. The brief was signed by a total of 14 lawyers and former officials, including Federalist Society co-chair Steven Calabresi and former Attorney General Edwin Meese III, the publication added.
“This dispute is not about the wisdom of tariffs or the politics of trade,” the group wrote. “It is about who holds the power to tax the American people.”
The group includes former Virginia Sen. George Allen, former Missouri Sen. John Danforth, and former Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, all Republicans.
Peter J. Wallison of the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute is included, among others.
Calabresi and Meese delivered defense of Trump in federal criminal prosections last year.
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The coalition is taking aim at Trump’s April executive order that slapped “reciprocal tariffs” on virtually all imported goods – a move they say was an unconstitutional overreach, according to NOTUS. The defection highlights growing friction between Trump and “American entrepreneurs, industrialists and traditional conservatives,” frustrated by the trade agenda.
“No statute authorizes what the President has done,” the group of legal scholars wrote. “The laws cited permit limited and targeted actions under narrow conditions. They do not authorize sweeping economic realignment. They do not permit unilateral taxation of vast sectors of the U.S. economy. These duties came not from Congress, but from a claim of executive power detached from constitutional limits.”
On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras granted the group permission to join the case, according to NOTUS.