CHICAGO, August 4, 2026 — Twenty-five U.S. states have filed a lawsuit seeking to overturn the latest round of tariffs announced by the White House, saying the Administration’s rationale of punishing exporting nations for permitting forced labor is patently bogus.
The action, filed Monday in the U.S. Court of International Trade, contends that the Administration’s stated reason for imposing duties of 10% or 12% on virtually all products exported to the U.S. by 60 countries is “a pretext to continue its illegal tariff scheme.”
For one thing, states the suit, there is no correlation between a nation’s suspected level of reliance on forced labor and what duty it will be required to pay to ship goods into the U.S. The decision on which countries pay a base surcharge of 10% and which are charged 12% is arbitrary, it alleges.
The suit notes that the tariffs were announced July 23, virtually simultaneous with the expiration of earlier duties that the White House said it was justified to impose under a different federal regulation. The Court of Trade disagreed with that contention from the Administration and ruled the earlier duties were illegal. But the charges remained in effect until their expiration on July 24 because of a pending appeal by the Administration.
Those duties that expired in July, in turn, were the White House’s answer to an earlier round of tariffs being struck down as beyond the president’s power to impose.
In each instance, the first judicial body to strike down the tariffs was the Court of International Trade.
The current lawsuit asks that the court do likewise again. It expressly asks that the matter be decided by a three-judge panel.
Included among the 25 plaintiff states are six that Trump carried in the 2024 presidential election.
Monday’s lawsuit follows an earlier legal challenge of the 10% and 12% tariffs filed by the Liberty Justice Center on behalf of two private companies, the spice supplier Burlap and Barrel and the watch retailer Collective Horology. Those plaintiffs were successful in their legal efforts to block Trump’s earlier tariffs.