Gavin Newsom and state AG Rob Bonta are blitzing the Trump administration with a bombshell new lawsuit saying Trump’s tariffs are completely illegal because Congress never approved them, a move that could wholly upend Trump’s signature cause.
California Governor Gavin Newsom is definitely trying to thumb his nose at the Trump administration in ways large and small, like this week’s seemingly troll-ish move to encourage Trump-hating Canadians to vacation in California. That was a smaller and pettier move, but Wednesday we wake to news that Newsom is picking a much, much larger fight with Trump.
The Chronicle reports that Newsom could potentially have all of Trump’s notorious tariffs completely wiped out by the courts, as California has sued the Trump administration saying the tariffs aren’t legal, in a lawsuit scheduled to be filed Wednesday morning in a San Francisco federal court.
Donald Trump does not have the authority to unilaterally impose the largest tax hike of our lifetime with his destructive tariffs.
— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) April 16, 2025
We’re taking him to court. pic.twitter.com/LAm1NRx300
“President Trump’s unlawful tariffs are wreaking chaos on California families, businesses, and our economy — driving up prices and threatening jobs,” Newsom said in a Wednesday statement announcing the suit. “We’re standing up for American families who can’t afford to let the chaos continue.”
In his typical Gavin Newsom speaking-too-close-to-the-camera video tweet, Newsom added that “California is the largest manufacturing state in our union, one of the largest trading partners around the globe. No state will be impacted more than the state of California as it relates to the unilateral authority that’s being asserted by the Trump administration to impose the largest tax increase in modern American history."
Newsom had already announced his plans to get other trading nations to exempt California from the tariffs, but it’s not clear if that’s even legally possible. But this lawsuit has a very clear legal argument. Trump put these tariffs into effect without congressional approval, just like when President Biden canceled student loan debt without congressional approval, and that was shot down by the courts too.
And the tariffs are hitting California harder than other states, according to Newsom and his lawsuit. California has the largest economy of any state, we export a ton of fruits, nuts, and vegetables to the rest of the world, and construction costs would be expected to soar under Trump’s tariff plan, exacerbating the state’s housing crisis by preventing housing from being built.
Perhaps most significantly, the wild swings in the stock market under Trump have enormous influence on how much California has coming into its coffers from high net-worth individuals. And even though Trump put a 90-day pause on the tariffs last week as the stock market was getting hammered, he still kept the 145% tariffs on China.
Newsom’s lawsuit says it was illegal that Trump used the International Economic Emergency Powers Act of 1977 to put the tariffs into effect, completely sidestepping Congress by doing so. According to CBS News, if Newsom’s case is successful, the court could immediately block all of Trump’s tariffs.
So this is certainly a very brazen move by Gavin Newsom, and if successful, would definitely burnish his national profile. Though speaking of brazen, we can’t help but wonder that even if Newsom’s case won, if Trump would just ignore the court orders, as he is already doing with the wrongly departed Venezuelan migrant.
Image: ATLANTA, GEORGIA - JUNE 27: Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) speaks to reporters in the spin room following the CNN Presidential Debate between U.S. President Joe Biden and Republican presidential candidate, former U.S. President Donald Trump at the McCamish Pavilion on the Georgia Institute of Technology campus on June 27, 2024 in Atlanta, Georgia. President Biden and former President Trump are faced off in the first presidential debate of the 2024 campaign. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
