On Tuesday, May 13, a three-judge panel of the US Court of International Trade will hear a lawsuit asking it to strike down President Donald Trump’s recently imposed tariffs. The case is known as V.O.S. Selections v. Trump.

The trade court, a New York-based federal court that hears lawsuits related to US trade laws, will not be the last word on this high-stakes dispute, which is likely to wind up before the Supreme Court. The trade court, however, is poised to have the first word — meaning the May 13 hearing will offer the American public its earliest window into how federal courts view the tariffs.

The plaintiffs in V.O.S. Selections, small businesses that import goods and thus must pay the tariffs, have two significant advantages.

One is that their legal arguments are quite strong. Under the Supreme Court’s “major questions doctrine,” courts are supposed to cast a skeptical eye on, and typically reject, executive actions “of vast ‘economic and political significance.’”

According to the Yale Budget Lab, Trump’s tariffs are expected to reduce the average US household’s income by the equivalent of $4,900. If that’s not a matter of vast economic and political significance, it’s hard to imagine what is.

Two, about a dozen former Republican officials and other GOP luminaries filed an amicus brief calling on the trade court to rule that the tariffs are illegal. They include three former senators, a former US attorney general, and several former federal judges. Among them is former Sen. John Danforth, a mentor to Justice Clarence Thomas who gave Thomas his first job out of law school. The Supreme Court’s Republican majority is often responsive to conservative legal elites and prominent members of their party.

That said, it is far from certain how the trade court — and, ultimately, the Supreme Court — will see this case. The major questions doctrine is brand new, and it has

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