A New Jersey food importer sued President Donald Trump and federal trade and customs agencies on Tuesday in the U.S. Court of International Trade in New York, challenging 50% tariffs on Canadian goods and arguing that the president lacks authority to impose them under a Depression-era law.3,5,2
The plaintiff, Gellert Global Group Corp., is a third-generation family business that imports Canadian cheese. Its complaint also names the Executive Office of the President, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, its commissioner, Rodney S. Scott, the U.S. Trade Representative, Jamieson Greer, and the office of the trade representative. The tariffs cover about $20 billion worth of Canadian goods, according to the Associated Press.3,2,5
The duties rest on Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930, a provision that the complaint says no president had used to impose a tariff in the 96 years since its enactment until July 2026. The complaint says the president issued three proclamations on July 20, 2026, each imposing an additional 50% duty on Canadian products listed in an annex. The duties took effect on August 22, 2026, after a three-day suspension. The Associated Press described the move as occurring in August, while the complaint dates the proclamations to July.2,3,5
The administration later expanded the measures. On September 8, the president modified the lists of covered products and excluded certain Canadian products from importation into the United States altogether, according to the complaint. The Associated Press reported that the president last month announced an outright ban on nearly $1 billion worth of Canadian products, including alcoholic beverages, dairy products and motorcycles. Canada responded with dollar-for-dollar retaliation, the Associated Press said, and Al Jazeera described Canadian retaliatory tariffs on about $20 billion of U.S. goods.2,3,5
Gellert says the tariffs are raising its costs and disrupting its relationships with suppliers on both sides of the border. According to the complaint, the company paid more than $520,000 in duties between September 16 and October 11. “Gellert Global Group has spent generations building trusted relationships with suppliers, customers and partners across the food industry,” said Thomas Gellert, the company’s co-chief executive officer, in a press release. “These tariffs disrupt those relationships overnight and create costs and uncertainty that ripple through the entire supply chain.”5
The central legal claim is that Congress has since passed newer trade laws that displaced Section 338. The Associated Press reported that some of those laws delegated tariff power to the president but also limited his authority to certain circumstances, such as national security threats and foreign currency crises, and required investigations and other procedures first. The lawsuit argues that Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 requires investigations, public comment and other safeguards that the administration has bypassed. “The administration cannot skip those protections by reaching for a 1930 statute that no president had ever used to impose a tariff,” said Jeffrey Schwab, the Liberty Justice Center’s senior counsel and director of litigation.3,5,2
The complaint also challenges the government’s stated justification. The administration has said that Canada discriminates against American goods, citing alcohol, automobiles and dairy. The lawsuit argues that two of the Canadian measures “arose in response to the president’s own tariffs, while the third involves Canadian dairy policy governed by the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA).” The complaint further contends that the duties do not “offset” any measured burden, as the statute requires, and that the 50% rate is simply the statutory maximum. Reason, which published an article supporting the case, summarized that the complaint advances five arguments, including that the administration’s reading runs afoul of the major questions doctrine and the constitutional limits on delegating legislative power.2,4
The complaint also says the administration did not follow Section 338’s waiting period. The statute permits duties to be collected only 30 days after the proclamation that lists the products, the complaint says. When the president added products, including cheeses that Gellert imports, on September 8, he directed that duties begin to be collected on September 15, seven days later, according to the complaint.2,5
Sara Albrecht, chair of the Liberty Justice Center, said the group is representing Gellert. “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,” Albrecht said. The Liberty Justice Center describes itself as a libertarian advocacy group, and it successfully challenged earlier Trump tariffs before the Supreme Court this year. The lawsuit asks the court to declare the tariffs illegal, stop them from being collected and order refunds with interest for affected importers. Reason reported that it also seeks class action certification for all importers subject to the Section 338 tariffs.3,5,4
The case is the latest in a series of legal challenges to Trump’s tariff policy. In February, the Supreme Court struck down most of the tariffs he imposed in 2025 under emergency economic powers, and the administration was forced to refund billions of dollars to importers that had paid them, the Associated Press reported. A trade court later ruled against a temporary 10% global tariff imposed under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974. In July, the president also imposed tariffs of 10% to 12.5% on dozens of trading partners, citing forced labor, and those tariffs are being challenged in court.3,5
The White House and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the lawsuit, the Associated Press and Al Jazeera reported. The complaint was filed in the trade court, which hears tariff-related cases, and the government has not yet responded to it in the reports reviewed.3,5,2