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UPDATE (May 29, 2025, 3:23 p.m. ET): The Federal Circuit on Thursday granted the Trump administration’s request to temporarily halt a lower court ruling against the president’s tariffs, pending further litigation. The circuit court could later decide to reinstate the ruling, and the Supreme Court can have the final word in any event.
The Trump administration lost big on tariffs Wednesday when a federal trade court panel blocked many of them and said the president had exceeded his authority. The question now is whether that ruling will hold as the administration gets ready to run to the Supreme Court to halt it.
Government lawyers are already asking a federal appeals court to block the ruling while signaling their plans to ask the justices for help, if needed. “A stay pending appeal, and an immediate administrative stay, are necessary to prevent immediate, irreparable harm to the Nation,” they wrote to the Federal Circuit in an emergency motion Thursday.
They said that without at least immediate temporary relief, they would ask the Supreme Court for emergency relief Friday “to avoid the irreparable national-security and economic harms at stake.”
The government is seeking to halt a ruling from a three-judge panel of the Court of International Trade, which permanently enjoined President Donald Trump’s executive orders regarding tariffs and told the government to issue orders unwinding them within 10 calendar days.
The Federal Circuit is a specialized court that hears appeals from the trade court. Like the geographically based appeals courts around the country, the next step after the Federal Circuit is the Supreme Court.
Separately on Thursday, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., dealt the administration another loss on the subject. U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras said that in light of the trade court’s “sweeping order” on Wednesday, blocking tariffs in the case before him (involving two family-owned toy companies) “will have virtually no effect on the government.” But he said that doing so would protect those companies from “irreparable injury” if the trade court’s order is halted or reversed. He agreed to halt his preliminary injunction for two weeks to let the government appeal it. The government filed a notice of appeal Thursday, putting the matter in front of the D.C.-based federal appeals court as well, though the Supreme Court can have the last word in both cases.
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