Trump’s Tariff Rationale Challenged in Suit by Small Firms (1)

Several small US businesses sued President Donald Trump over his “Liberation Day” tariffs in the latest legal challenge to his use of sweeping executive powers to extract concessions from foreign trade partners.

Trump’s use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose tariffs is unconstitutional and the emergency he declared to justify the levies “is a figment of his own imagination,” the companies said in a suit filed Monday in the US Court of International Trade. “Trade deficits, which have persisted for decades without causing economic harm, are not an emergency.”

The suit is at least the third challenging ...