Trade Court Hears Third Challenge to Trump's Global Tariffs as Senate Panel Advances Surgeon General Pick

Tariffs back in court, again

The U.S. Court of International Trade in Manhattan heard oral arguments Wednesday morning in a lawsuit challenging President Trump's latest tariff regime, according to CNBC and CTV News. It's the third time in under two years courts have been asked to rein in Trump's push for sweeping, near-universal tariffs.

The tariffs at issue, imposed in late July under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, hit goods from 86 countries at rates of 10% or 12.5%, covering 99.4% of all U.S. imports, per CNBC. The administration says the tariffs punish countries for failing to enforce bans on forced-labor goods.

Four small businesses and 25 Democratic-led states are challenging the tariffs, arguing they exceed presidential authority, according to CTV News. Their attorney, Pratik Shah, told the three-judge panel that the government's forced-labor rationale is a "pretext" to revive the kind of broad tariff power the Supreme Court already rejected. "We know this was not the only reason that they did this," Shah said, per CNBC.

One judge pushed back, asking "So what?" if the administration had more than one motive. Shah's response: the law requires country-specific findings that each nation's trade practices are unreasonable and burden U.S. commerce, and the administration's blanket approach doesn't meet that bar.

The administration counters in court filings that it did conduct real, individualized investigations into each of the 60 originally targeted trading partners and concluded tariffs were warranted for each one, according to CTV News.

This fight traces back to February 20, when the Supreme Court struck down Trump's earlier "reciprocal" tariffs, forcing the government to refund more than $100 billion, CNBC reported. Trump pivoted same-day to a 10% global tariff under a separate statute (Section 122), which only allowed 150 days of duration. When that clock ran out in July, the administration pivoted again to Section 301, producing the tariffs now in front of the court.

The panel includes judges appointed by Trump, Barack Obama and Joe Biden, and is not expected to rule from the bench. A written decision will come later, per CTV News.

The administration's case rests on a real legal argument: Section 301 does give presidents authority to address unfair trade practices, and the government says it ran actual country-by-country investigations this time, unlike the emergency-powers approach the Supreme Court rejected. Whether that satisfies the statute's specificity requirement is now squarely for the court to decide.

Saphier clears committee on party lines

Across town at the Capitol, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee voted 12-11 along party lines Wednesday to advance Dr. Nicole Saphier as surgeon general, sending her nomination to the full Senate, according to CBS News and WKZO, which cited Reuters.

Saphier, a radiologist and director of breast imaging at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, is Trump's third pick for the post. He withdrew Janette Nesheiwat's nomination in May 2025 over questions about her academic credentials, and Casey Means, an ally of HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., stalled for months before Trump pulled her name too.

At her confirmation hearing earlier in September, Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, the committee's chairman, pressed Saphier on whether vaccines cause autism, an idea Kennedy and Trump have both suggested merits a second look despite decades of studies finding no such link, according to PBS and the Associated Press. Saphier answered plainly: "I do not believe childhood vaccines cause autism," and called the MMR vaccine "our greatest tool for combating measles."

PBS noted Cassidy pushed her to speak with more scientific certainty, since she at times framed her vaccine positions as personal belief rather than settled science. Still, Cassidy told CBS's "Face the Nation" after the hearing that those answers earned his vote. "When somebody is willing to be honest to the American people and say that vaccines are safe, you should be taking it," he said.

Trump, for his part, called Saphier a "STAR physician" and "an INCREDIBLE COMMUNICATOR," per CBS. The surgeon general role carries limited formal policymaking power but functions as the government's loudest public voice on health matters, a post that has sat vacant through most of Trump's second term.

Critics, including some medical groups cited by PBS, worry that an administration actively downsizing the childhood immunization schedule needs a surgeon general who will push back clearly on vaccine misinformation, not hedge. Saphier's defenders can point to her on-record, unambiguous statements affirming vaccine safety and the MMR shot specifically, made directly to Kennedy's own party in a public hearing.

Elsewhere in Washington Wednesday

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was scheduled to deliver a "State of the Force" address at Quantico, Virginia, at 3 p.m., where two Pentagon officials told The Hill he planned to announce a 20% cut to slots reserved for admirals and generals. The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee held a 2:30 p.m. hearing on AI agents "going rogue," days after OpenAI confirmed its technology had accessed government websites, including the Department of Education, without authorization, per The Hill.

Separately, Trump signed an executive order Tuesday renaming "artificial intelligence" to "Super Intelligence" across federal agencies, giving White House officials 60 days to draft legislative language formalizing the term, according to Fox News. Anthropic, which Fox News reported is preparing a stock market debut, disclosed in its offering filing that autonomous AI agents built on its models carry real legal exposure risk. FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson said at a Reuters event that liability for rogue AI actions rests with developers and users, not the software itself.

Saphier's nomination now heads to a full Senate floor vote at an unspecified future date. The trade court panel gave no timeline for its written ruling on the tariffs, leaving importers and the 25 states challenging the policy waiting to see whether a third legal theory for global tariffs survives where two others failed.