HARTFORD, CT – Connecticut will join 11 other states in suing the Trump administration to halt what Attorney General William Tong called the president’s “lawless” tariff policies, Tong announced Wednesday afternoon.
Standing in the lobby of the attorney general’s office building on Capitol Avenue, Tong was flanked by Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-CT, and Rep. Joe Courtney, D-2nd District.
“We’re suing because the president is hurting people here in Connecticut right now,” Tong said. “But we’re also suing because his actions are utterly unlawful, unconstitutional, unauthorized, whatever the word is. He’s got no power to go through with this.”
The lawsuit, being led by Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield and Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, alleges that the president does not have the constitutional authority to impose tariffs.
“The Constitution assigns to Congress, not the president, the ‘Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises,” Art. I, § 8,” the lawsuit states. “Yet over the last three months, the President has imposed, modified, escalated, and suspended tariffs by executive order, memoranda, social media post, and agency decree. … By claiming the authority to impose immense and ever-changing tariffs on whatever goods entering the United States he chooses, for whatever reason he finds convenient to declare an emergency, the President has upended the constitutional order and brought chaos to the American economy.”
Trump has claimed the authority to levy a 10% tariff on most imports, and in some cases much higher, to the United States under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). Trump declared a national emergency regarding trade on April 2, arguing that under the conditions of an emergency, IEEPA empowers him to act.
Tong rejected that argument on Wednesday.
“I, and my tax lawyer wife, and attorneys general in other states have had to learn what IEEPA means and what it does,” he said. “Let me tell you what it doesn’t do. It doesn’t authorize the president to levy tariffs. It says nothing about tariffs. And only when there is an unusual and extraordinary threat to our country and national security can he act. He hasn’t made that showing.”
Tong cited research from the non-partisan Yale Budget Lab, which stated that the tariffs will increase annual costs for consumers by $4,900 per household. Consumers will pay 87% more for shoes and 65% more for clothing in the short term. In addition, food prices will be 2.6% higher in the short term, and motor vehicles will rise 12% in the short term.
Blumenthal said the decision to sue was not made easily. He said he has done so in the past as attorney general and it is not done lightly.
“It’s a last resort,” he said. “It’s done because the harm is so grievous and urgent and the lawbreaking is so clear and blatant that there’s no choice but to go to court and say to the president of the United States, you are breaking the law. You are hurting people, you’re harming them, and you are creating a burden for the people of Connecticut whose well-being we represent.”
Courtney, who serves as a senior member on the Armed Services Committee, said his primary concern was the impact that Trump’s tariffs will have on military partnerships and deals between the United States and its allies.
“Connecticut is an export-oriented state,” he said. “If you look at our geography, if you look at our gross domestic product that we produce in terms of goods and services, we have to have trade in terms of creating and maintaining the wealth that exists in this state.”
He said one concrete example is in the aerospace industry. He cited a 2023 deal between Lockheed Martin and Canada to sell the northern neighbor 88 F-35 fighter planes, with every engine for those planes being built in Connecticut at Raytheon and Pratt and Whitney. That deal will potentially come under review from the next prime minister as a result of Washington’s tariff policies, he said.
He also referred to AUKUS, a trilateral security agreement between Australia, the United States, and the United Kingdom that sets the stage for three Virginia-class nuclear submarines to be built and delivered to Australia in the 2030’s, with significant parts of the work being done in Connecticut. That deal is also under threat thanks to the Trump tariffs, he said.
“This is totally unjustified, totally unnecessary, and, as the attorney general said, totally unconstitutional,” Courtney said.
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