Trump's Team Cite "Fragile" India-Pak Ceasefire To Justify Tariffs In Court

The Trump administration, which has been spending a lot of its time in courts lately due to controversial orders signed by Donald Trump, has urged the American judiciary not to put a 'stay' or 'hold' on the US President's vastly unpopular tariffs move. The reasons it gave to justify its request highlighted how Donald Trump "used tariffs and trade" to pause the India-Pakistan conflict, and force China into negotiations.

In its appeal to a New York court, the Trump administration claimed that a legal setback to the tariffs order signed by Trump would lead to undesirable actions by China and could even lead to a resumption of the India-Pakistan conflict. It would also leave Washington embarrassed globally, officials told the court.

The officials who represented the Trump administration in court were Secretary of State and National Security Adviser Marco Rubio, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer. A three-judge bench is hearing a case filed by a group of small businesses in the US challenging President Trump's use of a "national emergency" to impose tariffs that have crippled several companies.

In court, the Trump administration claimed that the US President has been using the tariff card to "fix" global issues, giving the recent military actions taken by Pakistan and India as its example. Though India has rejected Donald Trump's claims of "brokering" or "moderating" a "ceasefire" between "nuclear-armed" India and Pakistan, US officials have now repeated the claim in court, adding that the current truce between the two nations is "fragile".

"Allies and adversaries alike monitor US courts for signs of constraint on presidential power," US commerce secretary Howard Lutnick said, citing the "ceasefire" between India and Pakistan as a direct result of President Trump's "intervention". 

Describing the truce as a "tenuous ceasefire", Mr Lutnick claimed that both sides (India and Pakistan) agreed to stop their military actions only after Donald Trump offered to expand trade with the countries in exchange for it.

He went on to claim that if the court pauses President Trump's tariffs move, then it will lead to both countries resuming their military actions since there will be no condition left to compel them to maintain peace. "An adverse ruling that constrains presidential power in this case could lead India and Pakistan to question the validity of President Trump's offer, threatening the security of an entire region and the lives of millions", Mr Lutnick said.

Speaking about China, the US officials told the court that the very reason Beijing has come to the negotiating table in order to correct a very lopsided trade arrangement with the United States is because of President Trump's order to impose punishing tariffs on China.

Should the court ruling emerge as a setback to President Trump and his administration, Beijing would have no reason to continue its trade and tariff talks with the United States. An adverse ruling would "destroy the carefully crafted China trade agreement, which is asymmetric in America's favour, in order to address the emergency of our persistent goods trade deficit", Mr Lutnick said.

According to a report in the South China Morning Post, Mr Lutnick told the court that It was President Trump's spiraling tariffs that exerted pressure on Beijing to "achieve the foreign-policy objective of bringing China – the greatest contributor to the national emergency and a well-known strategic adversary – to the negotiating table".

He further stated that a conflicting court ruling would "collapse ongoing trade negotiations, allow for Chinese aggression during a period of strategic competition, and leave the American people exposed to predatory economic practices."

Backing his colleague, Secretary Rubio told the court that it was "not appropriately situated to handle and intervene in matters of foreign policy and national security." He went on to say that a legal setback would "lead to embarrassment of the United States on a global stage" and would "embolden allies and adversaries alike, leading to a dangerous situation globally".