(Charlie Kirk)—President Donald Trump and his administration have faced relentless legal challenges driven by Democrats since his inauguration, with ongoing lawsuits continuing to hinder his efforts to fulfill the agenda backed by a majority of voters in the November election.
However, the president notched a significant court win this week—one that’s received little attention from the mainstream media.
The U.S. Court of International Trade (CIT) has denied a request from a group of small businesses seeking to immediately block President Donald Trump’s broad tariff measures. In its decision, the three-judge panel ruled that the plaintiffs did not demonstrate a likelihood of “immediate and irreparable harm,” the legal threshold required for a temporary restraining order.
As a result, Trump’s wide-ranging tariff plan remains in effect while the plaintiffs’ broader request for injunctive relief continues to move through the courts.
The win is significant because the use of tariffs is the cornerstone of Trump’s quest to level the international trade playing field.
On Tuesday, the judges also ordered both the plaintiffs and government attorneys to submit updated filings by early May, and scheduled a hearing to consider the merits of the case. The lawsuit was filed earlier this month by the Texas-based Liberty Justice Center on behalf of four small businesses located in New York, Pennsylvania, Utah, and Vermont.
The plaintiffs argued that each of the small businesses depends heavily on imported goods for daily operations. They claimed that the uncertainty caused by Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariff on imports—and the continued instability in the days and weeks that followed—would be “devastating” to their operations and supply chains.
The plaintiffs requested that the federal trade court issue a temporary restraining order to block the tariffs from taking effect, arguing that President Trump improperly invoked the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) — a law established to give presidents the power to do what Trump is doing — to justify the sweeping new taxes on imported goods.
“The power claimed by the President here is extreme: he claims the power to unilaterally impose infinite tariffs of his choosing on any country he chooses — even countries with which we run a trade surplus,” they argued in their court filing. “Any grant of such authority by Congress to the President should qualify as a major question subject to the strictest judicial scrutiny — which this claim of authority under IEEPA cannot survive,” they added.
It’s not clear how the trade court will ultimately rule, but the fact that the judges didn’t just arbitrarily slap another nationwide injunction on the administration is a win for Trump.