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California filed two lawsuits against the Trump administration Monday — one to block President Trump’s latest round of tariffs on international trading partners, the other to block his administration from sharing needy families’ personal data with immigration officials.
California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, whose office brought the lawsuits alongside other Democrat-led states, said they were both intended to rein in a lawless president pushing policies that threaten American families already struggling to afford basic necessities.
Bonta said the new tariffs are part of a “failed and illegal economic policy” that has previously been blocked in court. He alleged that the proposed data sharing was part of a broader and illegal “mass surveillance effort” by the Trump administration to target its political opponents.
The White House has previously defended both tariffs and data-sharing policies as part of Trump’s “America first” agenda to improve the economic standing of American families.
In separate statements to The Times, it defended the new tariffs as a legitimate means of combating forced labor in international markets, which it alleged is having a negative impact on the U.S., and dismissed the data-sharing challenge as an effort by Democrats to protect undocumented immigrants over American families.
Trump has previously defended his tariffs, including a prior set that was ruled illegal by the U.S. Supreme Court, as necessary to fix years of unfair trading practices in which international partners took advantage of the U.S. However, many economists have determined that the cost of the tariffs are being passed on to U.S. consumers and contributing to the persistent inflation causing economic pain nationwide.
Trump, the White House and top officials in his administration have also previously defended the sharing of personal data among U.S. agencies, and from individual states to the federal government, as a commonsense way to reduce waste and fraud and to identify and remove people who are in the country illegally and consuming benefits intended for American families.
The administration has previously sought the personal data of Medicaid recipients, SNAP food assistance recipients, immigrants who have filed taxes with the Internal Revenue Service and registered voters in states across the country. All of those demands have also been challenged in court, with varying degrees of success.
Bonta’s office has now filed 82 lawsuits against the current Trump administration.
Trump’s latest tariffs, levies of between 10% and 12.5%, took effect late last month and apply to more than 80 countries, including some of the closest U.S. allies and largest trading partners such as Canada, Mexico and the European Union. They followed a Trump administration announcement of new 50% tariffs on many Canadian products, set to go into effect this month.
“Tariffs are taxes, and the American people cannot and should not shoulder the extra costs that come from the president’s failed and illegal economic policy — no matter how much the president wants them to,” Bonta said in announcing the lawsuit in the U.S. Court of International Trade.
Two previous attempts by the Trump administration to unilaterally levy tariffs on trading partners were rejected by the courts in the face of similar legal challenges by California and other states. In February, the Supreme Court rejected a sweeping slate of tariffs Trump had imposed on an emergency basis. In May, the Court of International Trade turned back another set.
The Trump administration has said the president’s latest tariffs are authorized by a separate law not considered in the previous litigation — one related to combating forced labor in global trade.