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NEW YORK — Two U.S. small businesses filed a lawsuit Friday in the U.S. Court of International Trade challenging new Section 301 tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump’s administration on imports from 60 economies. The Liberty Justice Center brought the case on behalf of Burlap & Barrel, a New York-based online spice retailer, and Collective Horology, a California-based watch retailer, arguing that the U.S. Trade Representative acted “arbitrarily and capriciously” by imposing near-uniform tariffs across materially different economies without a reasoned, record-based explanation. The new duties, which took effect the same day, range up to 12.5 percent and replaced a 150-day 10 percent global tariff that lapsed on Friday. WASHINGTON — The U.S. Trade Representative said the tariffs follow Section 301 investigations into whether trading partners took sufficient steps to ban imports made with forced labor, but the lawsuit contends the measures sweep in lawful imports with no demonstrated connection to such abuses, including products from small firms that say they maintain transparent and responsible supply chains. Liberty Justice Center chairman and CEO Sara Albrecht said the administration cannot evade legal limits on tariff powers by switching statutory authorities, noting the group previously helped overturn Trump’s emergency tariffs at the Supreme Court. The suit seeks to block enforcement and collection of the new duties, testing whether using Section 301 to levy broad, multi-country tariffs exceeds presidential authority, as several U.S. trading partners, including China, Japan and Australia, publicly criticize the measures.

By James Porter | JQJO News