{"id":207504,"date":"2026-03-06T15:47:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-06T15:47:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/207504\/"},"modified":"2026-03-06T15:47:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-06T15:47:09","slug":"california-23-other-states-sue-trump-over-new-tariffs-long-beach-post-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/207504\/","title":{"rendered":"California, 23 other states sue Trump over new tariffs \u2022 Long Beach Post News"},"content":{"rendered":"

This story was originally published by\u00a0CalMatters<\/a>.\u00a0Sign up<\/a>\u00a0for their newsletters.<\/p>\n

California and 23 other mostly Democratic states on Thursday sued the Trump administration over its new justification for the president\u2019s wide-ranging tariffs.<\/p>\n

State Attorney General Rob Bonta is co-leading the lawsuit with the attorneys general of Oregon, Arizona and New York. They say President Donald Trump\u2019s use of Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 \u2014 which he invoked after the U.S. Supreme Court on Feb. 20\u00a0ruled<\/a>\u00a0that his use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act was unconstitutional \u2014 is also illegal.<\/p>\n

Trump immediately issued 10% tariffs across the board after the Supreme Court ruling that struck down most of the tariffs he imposed last year.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s desperately grasping at straws,\u201d Bonta said in a virtual press conference Friday. \u201cThe president\u2019s rationale for these unlawful tariffs has gone from unreasonable to ridiculous.\u201d<\/p>\n

The group filed the lawsuit in the Court of International Trade. It says that Section 122 has never been invoked and can be used only under limited circumstances, such as to deal with \u201clarge and serious balance-of-payments deficits\u201d and to prevent an \u201cimminent and significant depreciation of the dollar,\u201d and that the president\u2019s justifications do not meet those requirements.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe President is using his authority granted by Congress to address fundamental international payments problems and to deal with our country\u2019s large and serious balance-of-payments deficits,\u201d White House Spokesperson Kush Desai said in an email. \u201cThe Administration will vigorously defend the President\u2019s action in court.\u201d<\/p>\n

New York Attorney General Letitia James, who was also at the press conference, said the president \u201cconflates the balance-of-payment deficit with the trade deficit. They\u2019re two distinct issues.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 35-page\u00a0lawsuit<\/a>\u00a0explains that the balance of payments \u2014 the record of all transactions between U.S. and foreign residents that includes goods, services, income, assets and liabilities \u2014 consists of more than just the trade deficit.<\/p>\n

In addition, Section 122\u00a0 requires that tariffs be applied evenly across products, which the lawsuit says the administration is not doing because Trump\u2019s tariffs proclamation includes exemptions of goods from Canada and other countries, and many product exceptions.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn the merits, there\u2019s a strong argument \u2014 an easy argument \u2014 that the situation contemplated by Section 122\u201d doesn\u2019t apply to the current U.S. economic picture, said Alan Sykes, a professor of law at Stanford University who teaches international trade and more. Because the U.S. has no need to intervene to prop up a failing dollar, \u201cthe notion that this current situation fits the logic of Section 122 is silly.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Sykes said that tariffs imposed under Section 122 have a 150-day limit, and that it\u2019s unclear if the court will rule before then. And he also wondered whether the court will be willing to \u201ctell the president that there\u2019s no balance-of-payments deficit.\u201d<\/p>\n

The attorneys general also mentioned that Trump\u2019s tariffs have raised prices for U.S. consumers and businesses. A recent Yale Lab\u00a0study<\/a>\u00a0estimated that tariffs have cost the average household about $1,000 a year.<\/p>\n

\u201cPresident Trump ran on the promise of making life more affordable for families, yet here he is breaking the law to make life more expensive for Americans,\u201d Bonta said.<\/p>\n

In California, tariffs have disrupted businesses and industries including\u00a0agriculture<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0wine<\/a>, whose exports have fallen, according to a Public Policy Institute of California\u00a0analysis<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The other states that brought the lawsuit are Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin, and the governors of Kentucky and Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, a judge for the Court of International Trade ruled that companies that paid broad tariffs under the previous law cited by Trump\u00a0are due refunds<\/a>.The United States collected more than $264 billion in tariffs in 2025, according to the Tax Foundation. More than $130 billion of the tariffs collected were under the law the Supreme Court ruled the president did not have the authority to use.<\/p>\n

The plaintiffs in this new lawsuit are also seeking refunds of any tariffs already collected under Section 122.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This story was originally published by\u00a0CalMatters.\u00a0Sign up\u00a0for their newsletters. California and 23 other mostly Democratic states on Thursday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":207505,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[131,133,132],"class_list":["post-207504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=207504"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207504\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/207505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=207504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=207504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}