Yesterday, the Federal Circuit issued an administrative stay, suspending last week’s ruling by a divided three-judge panel of United States Court of International Trade (CIT) that invalidated the 10 percent across-the-board tariffs President Trump ordered in February. I wrote about the CIT’s decision here and here.
An administrative stay is a brief pause so that a court can familiarize itself with the underlying proceedings, facts, and law before deciding whether to grant more consequential, long-term relief. In this instance, the Trump Justice Department has asked the circuit to issue a preliminary injunction against the CIT’s ruling while the case proceeds on appeal — in both the circuit and, perhaps ultimately, the Supreme Court.
I expect that the court will grant the preliminary injunction the administration seeks, at least for as long as the circuit itself is handling the case. Although I expect the administration to lose in the end, the DOJ is right to point out that the government would be harmed, probably without full recompense, if the CIT’s ruling were implemented now only to have the circuit eventually decide the case in the government’s favor (i.e., importers would have to be compensated for billions in tariffs already paid, the tariffs would otherwise go uncollected, and the government would have a hard time getting those lost tax collections back).
The president ordered the 10 percent tariffs, purporting to rely on Section 122 of the 1974 Trade Act, after the Supreme Court invalidated the larger tariffs he had imposed in purported reliance on the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. (See Learning Resources v. Trump (Feb. 20, 2026). The CIT majority concluded that a “balance of payments” deficit — an extraordinary event that triggers the president’s tariff authority under Section 122 — is not the same thing as a “balance of trade” deficit, on which the president is mainly relying. A dissenting CIT judge argued that the majority construed “balance of payments” too rigidly.