(The Daily Progress)—The owner of a small Charlottesville electronics manufacturer has had to raise its prices more than 20% over the past few weeks, and he knows exactly who to blame: Donald Trump.
Engineer David Levi, founder of MicroKits, says he has no other choice. His company, which produces educational electronic kits and musical devices for young learners, depends heavily on components such as breadboards, resistors and capacitors, a majority of which come from China, Taiwan, Mexico and Thailand — all of which are facing double- and triple-digit tariff increases.
“With the level of tariffs, it’s not even a question of ‘How high will you have to increase your prices?’” Levi told The Daily Progress. “It’s a question of ‘Are those parts even available effectively?’”
MicroKits has joined four other American owner-operated companies suing the Trump administration over the tariffs.
The companies, represented by the Liberty Justice Center, argue that Trump’s sweeping tariffs on imports from roughly 90 countries are an illegal “power grab” that will wreak “severe damage to the global economy.”
The prominent Austin, Texas-based law firm filed the lawsuit on behalf of its five plaintiffs in the U.S. Court of International Trade on April 14. In addition to Trump, the complaint names Acting Commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection Pete Flores, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer and Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick as defendants.
“It’s so obviously unlawful for the president to set tariff rates when the Constitution gives that authority to Congress, and Congress has not delegated that to the president in this circumstance,” Liberty Justice Center’s President Jacob Huebert told The Daily Progress.
On April 2, Trump implemented a global 10% tariff on nearly all imports to the U.S. and levied significantly higher rates against specific nations. Declaring it “Liberation Day,” he hit China with a 145% tariff; Canada and Mexico with 25%; and Taiwan with 32%. One week later, the president backed down and announced a 90-day break to allow for trade negotiations, lowering all tariffs to 10% — except for China.
Levi said the “unstable and unpredictable” nature of Trump’s tariffs have left him feeling “paralyzed.”
“In a lot of ways, I’m still in denial that this is happening, and I think a lot of other people are still in denial,” Levi said. “Over time, prices will spread throughout the economy — price increases.”
While attorneys at the Liberty Justice Center said they were contacted by “several dozen businesses” as word of their intention to sue the Trump administration spread, they only chose to represent five.
Levi’s fellow plaintiffs represent a variety of industries sourcing materials from a variety of countries. Some of them don’t know how much longer they can hold on to their business.
“Even before this year’s increases, we were already paying tariffs of up to 39.5%. With the additional 145% now imposed, we can’t survive long enough to shift course,” said Nik Holm, president of Burlington, Vermont-based Terry Precision Cycling, in the lawsuit.
The plaintiffs
The other plaintiffs joining MicroKits in its lawsuit against the Trump administration are:
- VOS Selections, a small-batch wine, spirit and sake distributor based in New York. A family-owned business since 1987, VOS Selections imports alcohol, the type of which cannot be found in the U.S., from countries around the globe, including Austria, Italy, Greece, Lebanon, Morocco, Spain, France, Portugal, Mexico, Argentina, Germany, Croatia, Hungary and South Africa.
- FishUSA Inc., a retail and wholesale e-commerce company that was established in 2000 in Fairview, Pennsylvania. It produces and sells freshwater fishing tackle and gear. The main countries it imports products from include Canada, China, South Korea and Kenya.
- Genova Pipe, a private manufacturer in Salt Lake City which produces ABS pipes, widely used in plumbing and drainage systems. Genova Pipe purchases raw ABS resin from South Korea and Taiwan.
- Terry Precision Cycling, a women’s cycling apparel enterprise started in 1985 to encourage more inclusivity in the sport. Importing finished goods from China, Taiwan, Vietnam, Italy and the Philippines, the company’s domestic manufacturing branch also acquires fabrics from Guatemala, El Salvador, China and the European Union.
Levi also is skeptical his business can make it.
After getting laid off from his position as an electrical engineer with a major toy manufacturer in 2020, Levi started selling homemade, educational theremin kits, handheld electronic musical devices that produce sound via two metal antennas. As his online sales took off, he soon developed enough capital to launch MicroKits and began to expand his inventory to include handheld synthesizers.
Today, he has one part-time employee who assists with the final assembly work. Levi was considering adding another staffer to the team to handle the business side of the operations, freeing himself to design more products.
Now, he doesn’t know how long his one current employee will have a job.
“My strategy is run my factory for [seven] more weeks with the parts I have,” he said. “Then, if I don’t get parts, just furlough my worker and wait for things to happen.”
When Levi places an order for more diodes or circuits, it typically takes about 10 weeks for the shipment to arrive. Given how much has changed in U.S. trade policy in one week — much less 10 — he’s concerned about making any new purchases — if he can find them.
“If I spent $10,000 ordering a set of parts, and then, ‘Oh, it turns out tariffs are 250%,’ I suddenly get a $25,000 bill in taxes that I was not expecting when I placed the order,” said Levi.
Just a few weeks ago, one of his theremin kits cost $39.95. Now, it’s listed at $49.95. And that’s an “optimistic” figure, Levi said, considering where the economy is heading.
Right now, it’s the manufacturers who are getting hit with the heavy cost of tariffs, he said, but it’s only a matter of time before that trickles down to the consumers.
“Even if the tariffs are undone, there’s so much fear now,” he said. “As a manufacturer, you’re afraid that ‘If I decide to grow my business in America in 10 weeks, I might get hit with a huge tariff, because maybe the tariffs will be back,’ so that’s just going to slow things down so much.”
“Even if another declaration changes the tariffs, there’s going to be a lot of lack of investments, which is, again, why I think it’s important that we get some clarity from the courts about what is and isn’t allowed in America,” Levi added.
There is a possibility of some reprieve.
Less than an hour before speaking with The Daily Progress on April 18, the Liberty Justice Center filed a motion with the Court of International Trade calling for either a temporary restraining order on Trump’s tariffs or a permanent injunction. The latter would be a final ruling from the court decreeing that the president overstepped his executive powers.
“It would be totally appropriate for the court to do that here,” said Huebert. “Because it’s a really straightforward legal issue.”
Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution grants Congress — not the president — the “power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises.” However, Congress has the ability to explicitly hand the power to levy taxes or tariffs over to the executive branch in the case of an “unusual and extraordinary threat,” as outlined under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA.
Trump cited IEEPA to rationalize his “Liberation Day” tariffs, saying the U.S. is under threat of a “large and persistent trade deficit.”
Levi and his fellow plaintiffs argue in their suit that a trade deficit does not meet the criteria for an “unusual and extraordinary threat.”
“His claimed emergency is a figment of his own imagination: trade deficits, which have persisted for decades without causing economic harm, are not an emergency,” reads the complaint. “This Court should declare the President’s unprecedented power grab illegal, enjoin the operation of the executive actions that purport to impose these tariffs under the IEEPA, and reaffirm this country’s core founding principle: there shall be no taxation without representation.”
A number of lawmakers, including several from Virginia, have decried Trump’s tariffs. In a statement delivered to The Daily Progress, Democratic U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine referred to the president’s use of IEEPA as “a clear abuse of an authority intended only for emergencies.”
“I’m glad business leaders are speaking up and will be watching this case closely,” said Kaine of the MicroKits lawsuit. “I will also continue to do all I can in the Senate to ensure that Congress exercises its power to protect our economy, including by forcing a vote later this month to end the litany of tariffs Trump announced on April 2.”
Liberty Justice Center’s suit is not the only one the White House is facing in response to its trade policies.
According to Lawfare’s “Trump Administration Litigation Tracker,” three additional suits have been filed since April 3 against the administration’s use of emergency powers to raise tariffs. One lawsuit was filed by California state, another by two members of the Indigenous Blackfeet Nation in Montana and a third has been filed by woman-owned school supplies and organizational tools supplier.
Though Huebert described the matter as a “straightforward legal issue,” the case will likely be anything but. He expects whichever party loses the suit in front of the International Trade Court to appeal the decision, sending the case to the U.S Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit — and then, the Supreme Court.
Even if it reaches the highest court in the land, and a majority of the justices come down on the side of the plaintiffs, it remains unclear if the White House will abide by the court’s decision.
Many of the executive orders Trump issued in a flurry since taking office have met legal pushback. The president’s attempts to end birthright citizenship, federal support for gender-affirming medical care, foreign aid and transgender military service have all been temporarily blocked by the courts.
Another one of the administration’s legal battles has dominated the media and public attention in recent weeks: the mistaken March 15 deportation of 29-year-old Maryland man Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was sent to a maximum security terrorist prison in El Salvador.
Though the Supreme Court ordered the White House to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return, Trump has not only failed to comply — claiming without evidence the man is a member of the MS-13 international gang — but regularly taunted the ruling.
Despite the president’s disregard for the U.S. legal system, Huebert is taking Trump at his word.
“The president has said that he will respect decisions of the Supreme Court, and presidents long have done that, including President Trump,” he said. “So we trust and expect that the president will abide by any decision that the courts issue here.”