The Financial Post reports in its Thursday edition that the Trump administration is being sued by Gellert Global Group over the imposition of 50-per-cent tariffs on an array of Canadian goods. A Bloomberg dispatch to the Post says that the suit broadly accuses U.S. President Donald Trump of trying to achieve his trade agenda by asserting a taxing power that belongs to Congress. The lawsuit, filed Tuesday, argues that President Donald Trump lacked authority to invoke a never-before-used section of U.S. law to order the levies against Canada. This is part of a trend of unlawful tariff actions by the administration. The suit centres on tariffs imposed under Section 338 of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930, which was meant to address discrimination against U.S. commerce, but the challengers contend that Congress "abandoned" the statute several years later in favour of a more "comprehensive scheme" and that no president ever issued tariffs under it. Even if the statute is still operative, the suit alleges that Mr. Trump's rationale for the Canadian tariffs failed to meet the necessary criteria and that the 50-per-cent rate isn't tethered to the law's requirement that it "offset" the actual "burden or disadvantage."
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