A U.S. food importer sued President Donald Trump on Tuesday over the 50% tariffs on Canada, challenging his use of Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930 — a Depression-era trade law being used, in the first known instance in nearly a century, to impose sweeping tariffs and import bans. Gellert Global Group filed the case in the U.S. Court of International Trade in New York (Gellert Global Group Corp v. Trump, 26-cv-4636), represented by the non-profit Liberty Justice Center.
Trump used Section 338 to slap an array of Canadian goods with a 50% levy after trade talks with Ottawa broke down in August, citing Canada's treatment of U.S. cars, alcohol and dairy. The following month, the same statute was used to ban the import of other Canadian goods outright, including motorcycles and some alcohol and dairy products. The lawsuit asks the court to declare the tariffs unlawful and order a refund of what importers have paid.
"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." — Sara Albrecht, Liberty Justice Center
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the filing. The administration's case for the tariffs themselves is the one the president has made all along: that Canada has treated American cars, alcohol and dairy unfairly, that talks broke down, and that the levies are the leverage to fix it. The legal fight is narrower — not whether Canada's practices are fair, but whether a 1930 statute Congress wrote for a different era hands the president this much power on his own signature.
The suit is the fourth wide-ranging legal challenge to Trump's tariff program, and it arrives on ground the courts have already ploughed: in February, the Supreme Court ruled against most of the tariffs the administration imposed in 2025 under other authorities, forcing the White House onto new legal footing — the footing Gellert is now attacking. If the Court of International Trade agrees that Section 338 cannot carry this weight, the decision would reach far beyond one food importer: it would strike at the legal foundation of the current tariffs on America's largest trading partner, and at the refund claims of every importer who has paid them.