Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick insisted Sunday a court fight over President Donald Trump’s tariff power won’t blunt the administration’s leverage as it works on trade deals with key partners ahead of a July deadline.
“All of the countries that are negotiating with us understand the power of Donald Trump and his ability to protect the American worker,” Lutnick told host Shannon Bream on “Fox News Sunday.” “And so what they’re doing is they’re negotiating with us. I think it cost us a week, maybe — maybe cost us a week. But then everybody came right back to the table. Everybody’s talking to us.”
A three-judge panel at the U.S. Court of International Trade ruled unanimously last week to block Trump’s sweeping global tariffs, finding that the law the president used to parlay his national emergency declarations into the punitive economic measures “does not authorize the President to impose unbounded tariffs.”
An appellate court temporarily stayed the ruling last Thursday. But some international negotiators say the judicial squabbles may strengthen their own hands in trade talks.
Lutnick was eager to dispel that narrative Sunday. The White House, he said, would take the ruling up to higher courts, and “the president’s going to win like he always does.”
“Rest assured, tariffs are not going away,” Lutnick said. “He has so many other authorities that even in the weird and unusual circumstance where this was taken away, we just bring on another or another or another. Congress has given this authority to the president, and he’s going to use it.”
Lutnick said Trump has the authority to levy tariffs because “the $1.2 trillion trade deficit and all the underlying implications of that is a national emergency.” Speaking Sunday on ABC, Director of the National Economic Council Kevin Hassett also said Trump has that authority, only he referred to the emergency as being that “more Americans die from fentanyl than have ever died in all American wars combined.”
Lutnick also told Bream he does not foresee an extension of the 90-day pause on many of Trump’s most punishing “reciprocal tariffs,” which will expire in early July.
“I think we’re going to get a lot, a lot of deals done. I think they’re all being set up. We could sign lots of deals now, but I think we’re trying to make them better and better and better,” Lutnick said.
“And as the president said, or he’ll just set rates and set the terms of the deal. So, I don’t see today that an extension is coming. In fact, I think that’s the deadline, and the president’s just going to determine what rates people have. If they can’t get a deal done, President Trump is going to determine what deal there’s going to be.”
