President Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs can go back into effect, an appellate court said on Thursday, just one day after the Court of International Trade declared the import taxes illegal. Judges on the appellate bench will receive written briefs from the plaintiffs and government lawyers next week. 

The White House has already pledged to take this fight all the way to the Supreme Court, if necessary. “Ultimately, the Supreme Court must put an end to this for the sake of our Constitution and our country,” Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said at a briefing Thursday while railing against judges who have blocked several administration policies. 

In a per curiam order released Thursday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit stated that Mr. Trump’s tariffs will be allowed to take effect as the appellate process plays out. The court granted the government’s request for an administrative stay, functionally placing a pause on the Court of International Trade’s decision released Wednesday that declared the tariff scheme illegal. 

“The plaintiffs-appellees are directed to respond to the United States’s motions for a stay no later than June 5,” the judges of the appellate court write. “The United States may file a single, consolidated reply in support no later than June 9, 2025.”

In their order released Wednesday night, three jurists on the Trade Court — one appointed by President Reagan, one appointed by President Obama, and one appointed by Mr. Trump himself — ruled unanimously that the sitting president had overstepped his authority and functionally taken the power of taxation from Congress for his own. 

The judges write that Mr. Trump’s justifications for the tariffs do not meet the standards set forth in statute, or in judicial precedent. 

The president, in early April, invoked the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to empower himself to institute the tariffs. The explanations for the tariffs have been changing, depending on who you ask, with some administration officials saying that the import taxes are permanent, while others say they’re just a negotiating tool. Secretary Lutnick recently said that the tariff rate will never go below 10 percent, though later added that maybe it could go lower than that. 

“An unlimited delegation of tariff authority would constitute an improper abdication of legislative power to another branch of government,” the three judges of the Trade Court write. “Regardless of whether the court views the President’s actions through the nondelegation doctrine, through the major questions doctrine, or simply with separation of powers in mind, any interpretation of IEEPA that delegates unlimited tariff authority is unconstitutional.”

One of Mr. Trump’s longstanding gripes with American trade policy is that not enough foreign governments and foreign citizens buy American products, leading to the creation of a trade deficit with most other countries in the world. The Trade Court said Wednesday that the trade deficit itself does not constitute an emergency that can justify Mr. Trump’s sweeping, unilateral tax hike. 

“Worldwide and Retaliatory Tariffs do not comply with the limitations Congress imposed upon the President’s power to respond to balance-of-payments deficits,” the judges wrote Wednesday. “The President’s assertion of tariff-making authority in the instant case, unbounded as it is by any limitation in duration or scope, exceeds any tariff authority delegated to the President under IEEPA.”