Rising This Week: Trump's tariffs head to appeals court

This week, an appeals court will review a ruling that Trump's tariffs are illegal, and the DOJ must explain why Jeffrey Epstein grand jury records should be unsealed.

A protester lampoons Trump’s tariffs in Seoul (Photo by Jung Yeon-je / AFP)

Are you looking for reporting that views each of Trump’s announcements of a major deal with the healthy dose of skepticism it deserves? All Rise News will never leave out crucial context — like the shaky legal grounds for Trump’s asserted power.

Some useful context appears to be missing from The New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal’s coverage of the trade deal that Donald Trump touted setting tariffs with the European Union at 15 percent rather than 30 percent.

None of those linked stories mention that the U.S. court specifically designated by Congress to review international trade found Trump’s tariffs illegal — at any level — and that ruling is coming up for appellate court review this week.

On Weds., July 31, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit will consider the three-judge panel’s ruling that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act does not justify Trump’s use of tariffs. The word “tariffs” cannot be found anywhere in the statute. (The federal appellate court paused the lower court’s ruling pending the appeal, but it hasn’t ruled yet on the merits.)

Oral arguments in the case are scheduled the day before the White House’s Aug. 1 deadline for Trump’s tariffs to take effect.

The case at issue was brought by five small businesses led by wines and spirits importer V.O.S. Selections, which recently warned the appellate court that Trump’s tariffs could damage their relationships with vineyards that “go back generations.”

In a legal brief, lawyers for the small businesses sum up the sweeping economic power Trump claimed — but which cannot be found in the law or the Constitution.

“The government claims the President may impose tariffs on the American people whenever he wants, at whatever level he wants, against whatever countries and products he wants, and for as long as he wants— merely by declaring longstanding U.S. trade deficits a national “emergency” and an “unusual and extraordinary threat,” declarations the government insists are unreviewable.”

No other president in United States history has asserted this power.

The Wall Street Journal quoted a trade adviser’s silver lining about Trump halving his tariffs threatened against the EU.

“They are not at the level where the global economy burns down,” said Dmitry Grozoubinski, senior trade adviser at Aurora Macro Strategies.

The legality of the unprecedented power over tariffs that Trump claimed has been largely absent in major media coverage of the development. It will not be absent in this newsletter.

This past Monday marked three months since the launch of All Rise News.

In that time:

• Two U.S. Senators — Sheldon Whitehouse and Ron Wyden — appeared as guests, each time breaking news on major stories in the headlines.

• Rep. Jake Auchincloss joined a Substack Live with me moments before Republicans approved Trump’s budget bill and accurately predicted that the Trump loyalists in the party would “fold like a cheap suit,” setting aside all of their previously professed reservations about the bill.

• California Attorney General Rob Bonta appeared on a live-stream to break down the 34th lawsuit that he filed against the Trump administration during his second term. We had a detailed discussion about his litigation opposing the birthright citizenship ban, Trump’s deployment of the military in Los Angeles and other issues.

• Other guests have included the most prominent legal experts like Harry Litman, Andrew Weissmann, Katie Phang, Mimi Rocah, Barbara McQuade, Norm Eisen, Asha Rangappa, and Joyce Vance, as well as major figures in independent media like Brian Tyler Cohen, Ben Meiselas, and Allison Gill.

I now routinely appear on cable news and wide-reaching independent media channels to discuss All Rise News reporting, including this newsletter’s scoops and correspondence from across the country.

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Once All Rise News achieves that baseline goal, my ambitions for the company are broader than any one reporter can provide. Building a newsroom will require steady growth over a long period of time, past the six-month and one-year anniversaries to come.

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