A federal court ruled on Wednesday evening that the massive tariffs President Donald Trump imposed shortly after beginning his second term are illegal.

The US Court of International Trade’s decision in two consolidated cases — known as V.O.S. Selections v. United States and Oregon v. Department of Homeland Security — is quite broad. It argues that the Constitution places fairly strict limits on Congress’s ability to empower the president to impose tariffs in the first place — limits that Trump surpassed — and it reads several federal trade laws to place rigid constraints on Trump’s ability to continue his trade war.

The decision may not be final; it can be appealed up to the Supreme Court. But if higher courts embrace the trade court’s reasoning, Trump most likely will not be able to reimpose the sweeping kind of tariffs at issue in the V.O.S. Selections case, although he might still be able to impose more modest tariffs that are more limited in scope and duration.

The three-judge panel that decided V.O.S. Selections unanimously agreed that the Trump’s tariffs, as they stand now, are illegal in an unsigned opinion. The panel included judges appointed by Presidents Ronald Reagan, Barack Obama, and Trump himself.

The trade court judges reached four significant conclusions in the V.O.S. Selections opinion

Trump primarily relied on the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 (IEEPA) when he imposed his tariffs. That statute permits the president to “regulate…transactions involving, any property in which any foreign country or a national thereof has any interest,” but this power “may........

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