By Dietrich Knauth
NEW YORK, Oct 20 (Reuters) – US food importer Gellert Global Group on Tuesday sued to stop the Trump administration’s latest tariffs on imports from Canada, saying the duties represent another attempt to claim presidential tariff power that has been rejected in court.
Republican President Donald Trump imposed 50% tariffs on a wide range of Canadian imports over the summer in response to what his administration called Canada’s discriminatory treatment of US-made cars, alcohol and dairy goods.
In imposing the tariffs, Trump invoked Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930, marking the law’s first known usage in nearly a century of existence.
The lawsuit, filed by the legal nonprofit Liberty Justice Center on behalf of the importer Gellert in the US Court of International Trade in New York, says Trump has used shifting legal rationales and invoked rarely used US laws in a persistent effort to claim authority over tariff power that the US Constitution assigns to Congress.
“No president should have the power to pull a dormant statute off the shelf and use it to impose sweeping tariffs or import bans without the limits Congress required,” said Sara Albrecht, CEO of the Liberty Justice Center.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
RECENT LEGAL CHALLENGES
The lawsuit marks the fourth time a wide-ranging tariff policy has been challenged in court during Trump’s second term as president.
The US Supreme Court in February ruled against most of the tariffs Trump imposed in 2025, but the Trump administration has continued to issue wide-ranging tariffs that have been subject to legal challenges by US states and businesses.
The US trade court previously ruled against a temporary 10% global tariff imposed by the Trump administration after its Supreme Court loss, and it is currently weighing the legality of a third round of global tariffs imposed in a purported effort to combat forced labor in international trade.
The plaintiff in the current lawsuit, Gellert Global, is a New Jersey-based food importer with $1.7 billion in annual revenue. It imports Canadian cheeses that have been subjected to a 50% tariff, and it seeks to represent a class of businesses that are similarly impacted by the tariffs.
The challenged tariffs were imposed under Section 338 of the 1930 Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act. They target a wide range of Canadian imports including wine, furniture, dairy products, cement, clothing, fishing rods and hockey equipment.
The new lawsuit argues that Section 338 has been overwritten by later tariff laws, including the Trade Act that Trump used to impose the forced labor tariffs earlier in 2026. Every statute that authorizes a US president to impose tariffs does so with strict limitations that the Trump administration has repeatedly ignored, the suit claims.
INCREASED TENSIONS
The challenged tariffs mark an increase in tensions between the US and Canada, after Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney scrapped a potential trade deal on August 22 over what he called unreasonable last-minute demands by the American side. The US imposed the new tariffs after talks broke down, and Canada responded with retaliatory tariffs on some US imports.
While no high-level talks have been scheduled since the August 22 breakdown, Dominic LeBlanc, the federal minister leading talks for Canada, said that the two sides remain in touch.
“We’re going to find a deal with the United States at some point that’s in the interests of the entire Canadian economy,” LeBlanc told reporters on Tuesday.
(Reporting by Dietrich Knauth in New York and David Ljunggren in Ottawa; Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi, Jonathan Spicer and Bill Berkrot)
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