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The Tariff Stay and the Quiet Arithmetic of Section 122 There is a particular kind of legal motion that is designed to do nothing dramatic in public, and the Trump administration's request this week for a stay at the Court of International Trade is exactly that kind of motion.
On the surface, the filing is procedural housekeeping: it asks the court to pause its own May 8 ruling against the ten percent global tariff while the government readies its appeal.
Read more carefully, however, the request reveals something more interesting about the architecture of executive trade power in 2026 and the awkward way it has been rebuilt after the Supreme Court dismantled most of last year's tariff toolkit.
The duty in question was imposed in February under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, a relatively obscure provision that lets a president slap temporary import restrictions on the world when the balance-of-payments picture looks bad enough.
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