New Mexico AG joins lawsuit to nullify Trump administration's new 10% global import tax

SANTA FE — New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez joined a coalition of two dozen attorneys general on Thursday in a lawsuit challenging the legality of a new 10% global tariff the Trump administration recently imposed on most products entering the U.S. 

Democratic attorneys general from Oregon, New York, California and Arizona are leading the lawsuit, arguing that President Donald Trump’s new tax on imports improperly relies on Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 as a legal basis and is a naked attempt to “sidestep” a U.S. Supreme Court ruling last month invalidating a previous set of tariffs imposed by the administration.

“For more than a year, the President has imposed, modified, escalated, and suspended tariffs by executive order, memoranda, social media post, and agency decree, without legal authority to do so,” the complaint, filed Thursday in the U.S. Court of International Trade, reads.

Torrez’s chief of staff, Lauren Rodriguez, issued a news release on behalf of the state’s top legal office on Thursday summarizing the case, which asserts that Section 122 of the Trade Act only authorizes the president to impose tariffs in limited circumstances, such as for “large and serious balance-of-payments deficits.”

Thursday’s lawsuit contends that Section 122 does not include trade deficits, which the Trump administration has cited as grounds to reinstate the new wave of import duties, which a recent study by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York found primarily impact “U.S. firms and consumers.”

Despite the opposition, as well as recent attempts by U.S. companies to recoup import payments totaling more than $100 billion following last month’s Supreme Court ruling, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced that the new 10% rate could be raised to 15% — the maximum allowable under Section 122 — this week, according to CNBC. Section 122 only permits the tariff to remain active for 150 days.

The new tariffs follow a Feb. 20 Supreme Court decision that struck down the administration’s previous tariff rate in a major blow to Trump’s second-term economic agenda, whose import duties, attorneys general argue, subvert Congress’s constitutional “power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises.”

“Once again, President Donald Trump is attempting to impose sweeping tariffs without the authority granted to him under the law," Torrez said in a statement.

"These actions create instability for American businesses and drive up costs for consumers,” he added. “The Constitution is clear that the power to impose tariffs rests with Congress, not the President, and the Supreme Court of the United States has already rejected the administration’s misuse of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to justify these policies. This coalition will continue working to challenge unlawful actions that put the American economy at risk.”

John Miller is the Albuquerque Journal’s northern New Mexico correspondent. He can be reached at jmiller@abqjournal.com.