“Forced labor is morally indefensible, but an important objective does not give the government permission to ignore the law,” Liberty Justice Center Chair and CEO Sara Albrecht said in a press release announcing the move. “The administration allowed one global tariff to expire and immediately replaced it with another under a different statute. Changing the statute doesn’t change the law. Every tariff authority has limits, and every administration must respect them.”
The firm’s lawyers helped overturn tariffs Trump imposed last year under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act and later won a lower court ruling against the temporary surcharge imposed under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, although that ruling was stayed pending appeal.
“These tariffs would punish a responsible American business, and the farmers we work with, without showing how taxes on our spices would address the policies of foreign governments that USTR says it is targeting,” said Ethan Frisch, co-founder and co-CEO of Burlap & Barrel, according to the press release.
The lawsuit also argues that the similarity between the new duties and the tariffs Trump previously imposed under IEEPA helps show that the administration settled on the tariff policy before completing its Section 301 investigations.
A separate group of businesses led by educational-products maker Learning Resources also filed suit at the CIT later Friday, making a parallel argument and asking for a three-judge panel to hear their challenge. Learning Resources was a plaintiff in the Supreme Court case that struck down Trump’s IEEPA tariffs.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
