NEW YORK — A US trade court blocked most of President Donald J. Trump’s tariffs in a sweeping ruling on Wednesday that found the president overstepped his authority by imposing across-the-board duties on imports from US trading partners.

The Court of International Trade said the US Constitution gives Congress exclusive authority to regulate commerce with other countries that is not overridden by the president’s emergency powers to safeguard the US economy.

“The court does not pass upon the wisdom or likely effectiveness of the President’s use of tariffs as leverage,” a three-judge panel said in the decision to issue a permanent injunction on the blanket tariff orders issued by Mr. Trump since January. “That use is impermissible not because it is unwise or ineffective, but because [federal law] does not allow it.”

Financial markets cheered the ruling. The US dollar rallied following the court’s order, surging against currencies such as the euro, yen and the Swiss franc in particular. Wall Street futures rose and equities across Asia also jumped.

The judges also ordered the Trump administration to issue new orders reflecting the permanent injunction within 10 days. The Trump administration minutes later filed a notice of appeal and questioned the authority of the court.

The court invalidated with immediate effect all of Mr. Trump’s orders on tariffs since January that were rooted in the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), a law meant to address “unusual and extraordinary” threats during a national emergency.

The court was not asked to address some industry-specific tariffs Mr. Trump has issued on automobiles, steel and aluminum, using a different statute.

The decisions of the Manhattan-based Court of International Trade, which hears disputes involving international trade and customs laws, can be appealed to the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington, DC, and ultimately the US Supreme Court.

TRADE TURMOIL
Mr. Trump has made charging US importers tariffs on goods from foreign countries the central policy of his ongoing trade wars, which have severely disrupted global trade flows and roiled financial markets.

Companies of all sizes have been whipsawed by Mr. Trump’s swift imposition of tariffs and sudden reversals as they seek to manage supply chains, production, staffing and prices.

A White House spokesperson on Wednesday said US trade deficits with other countries constituted “a national emergency that has decimated American communities, left our workers behind, and weakened our defense industrial base — facts that the court did not dispute.”

“It is not for unelected judges to decide how to properly address a national emergency,” Kush Desai, the spokesperson, said in a statement.

The ruling, if it stands, blows a giant hole through Trump’s strategy to use steep tariffs to wring concessions from trading partners. It creates deep uncertainty around multiple simultaneous negotiations with the European Union, China and many other countries.

However, analysts at Goldman Sachs noted the order does not block sector-specific levies and there were other legal avenues for Mr. Trump to impose across-the-board and country-specific tariffs.

“This ruling represents a setback for the administration’s tariff plans and increases uncertainty but might not change the final outcome for most major US trading partners,” analyst Alec Phillips wrote in a note.

Mr. Trump has promised Americans the tariffs would draw manufacturing jobs back to US shores and shrink a $1.2-trillion US goods trade deficit, which were among his central campaign promises.

Without the instant leverage provided by tariffs, the Trump administration would have to find new forms of leverage or take a slower approach to negotiations with trading partners.

Initial reaction among Asian policymakers was muted, with Japan’s economy minister saying he would examine the details of the ruling, while the Bank of Korea said it saw the effective tariff rate on South Korean exports under the ruling falling to 9.7% from 13.3%.

Hong Kong’s financial secretary said the court decision would “at least bring President Trump to reason.”

BUSINESSES HURTING
The ruling came in a pair of lawsuits, one filed by the nonpartisan Liberty Justice Center on behalf of five small US businesses that import goods from countries targeted by the duties and the other by 12 US states.

The companies, which range from a New York wine and spirits importer to a Virginia-based maker of educational kits and musical instruments, have said the tariffs will hurt their ability to do business.

“There is no question here of narrowly tailored relief; if the challenged Tariff Orders are unlawful as to Plaintiffs they are unlawful as to all,” the judges wrote in their decision.

At least five other legal challenges to the tariffs are pending.

Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield, a Democrat whose office is leading the states’ lawsuit, called Mr. Trump’s tariffs unlawful, reckless and economically devastating.

“This ruling reaffirms that our laws matter, and that trade decisions can’t be made on the president’s whim,” Mr. Rayfield said in a statement.

Mr. Trump has claimed broad authority to set tariffs under IEEPA. The law has historically been used to impose sanctions on enemies of the US or freeze their assets. Trump is the first US president to use it to impose tariffs.

The Justice department has said the lawsuits should be dismissed because the plaintiffs have not been harmed by tariffs that they have not yet paid, and because only Congress, not private businesses, can challenge a national emergency declared by the president under IEEPA.

In imposing the tariffs in early April, Mr. Trump called the trade deficit a national emergency that justified his 10% across-the-board tariff on all imports, with higher rates for countries with which the United States has the largest trade deficits, particularly China.

The country-specific tariff rates were paused for 90 days a week later though the baseline 10% duty was put in place for most nations. The Trump administration on May 12 said it was also temporarily reducing the steepest tariffs on China while working on a longer-term trade deal. Both countries agreed to cut tariffs on each other for at least 90 days. — Reuters

SEOUL/LONDON/BERLIN — South Korea’s young women are expected to lead a broad political backlash against the main conservative party at presidential elections on June 3, punishing it for months of chaos.

Multitudes of young men, though, are unlikely to join them.

In democracies worldwide, a political gender divide is intensifying among Gen Z voters, with young men voting for right-wing parties and young women leaning left, a break from pre-pandemic years when both tended to vote for progressives.

Recent elections spanning North America, Europe and Asia show this trend is either consolidating or accelerating, with angry, frustrated men in their 20s breaking to the right.

First-time South Korean voter Lee Jeong-min is one of them.

He says he will vote for the right-wing Reform Party’s candidate, Lee Jun-seok, on June 3. Mr. Lee, the candidate, vows to shut down the ministry of gender equality, speaking to an issue that resonates with men like Mr. Lee, the voter, who particularly resents that only men have to do military service.

“As a young man, I find this to be one of the most unfair realities of living in Korea. At the prime of their youth — at 21 or 22 years old — young men, unlike their female peers, are unable to fully engage in various activities in society because they have to serve 18 months in the military.”

In South Korea, almost 30% of men aged 18-29 plan to back the Reform Party compared with just 3% of young women, according to a Gallup Korea poll this month.

Overall, more than half of the men back right-wing parties while almost half the women want the left-wing Democratic Party candidate to win. The divergence shrinks for older age groups.

Political economist Soohyun Lee, of King’s College London, said many young South Korean men felt unable to meet society’s expectations: find a good job, get married, buy a home and start a family.

And they blame feminism, many believing that women are preferred for jobs. With negligible immigration in South Korea, Mr. Lee said, “women become the convenient scapegoat.”

ANGRY YOUNG MEN
In South Korea and other democracies, Gen Z men are seeing an erosion of their relative advantage, especially since the pandemic — to the point where in a few countries the gender pay gap among 20-somethings favors young women.

European Union data shows one of them is France, where men aged 18-34 voted in larger numbers for Marine le Pen’s far-right party than women in last year’s legislative elections.

In the UK, where more young men than women vote conservative, males aged 16-24 are more likely to be neither employed, nor in education than female counterparts, official data shows.

In the West, young men blame immigration as well as diversity programs for competition for jobs.

In Germany’s general election in February, the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) won a record 20.8% of the vote, tugged along by an undercurrent of support from young men — though the leader of the party is a woman.

Men aged 18-24 voted 27% for the AfD while young women ran to the other end of the political spectrum, voting 35% for the far-left Linke party, according to official voting data.

“A lot of young men are falling for right-wing propaganda because they’re upset, they have the feeling they’re losing power,” said Molly Lynch, 18, a Berliner who voted for Linke, drawn by its stand on climate change and economic inequality. 

“But it’s actually losing power over women that wasn’t actually equal in the first place.”

The gender divide is not restricted to Gen Z, voters born since the mid-to-late 1990s. Millennials, aged in their 30s and early 40s, have felt the winds of change for longer.

In Canada last month, men aged 35-54 voted 50% for opposition conservatives in an election turned upside down by US President Donald Trump’s tariffs on his northern neighbor. The Liberals, which had been braced for defeat, rode an anti-Trump wave back to power, thanks in large part to female voters.

“It tends to be men who have a bit more life experience and are now in that situation where they’re saying, ‘This isn’t working out for me and I want change’,” said Darrell Bricker, global chief executive of public affairs at polling firm Ipsos.

Nik Nanos, founder of Canadian polling outfit Nanos Research, agreed, saying social media was accelerating democracy’s “angry young men symptom”, especially in areas where blue collar jobs have dried up.

A FOREVER WAR?
Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign, which promised a manufacturing renaissance and attacked diversity programs, also resonated with young white and Hispanic men, but turned off young women, fueling the country’s big political gender gap.

Roughly half of men aged 18-29 voted for Mr. Trump, while 61% of young women went for his opponent, Kamala Harris. Young black voters of both genders still overwhelmingly backed Ms. Harris.

In Australia, which went to the polls this month, the Gen Z war did not play out at the ballot box. There was no clear divergence, with compulsory voting perhaps helping to explain why radicalized gender politics have not taken root.

“It tends to iron out extreme ideas, ideologies,” said political scientist Intifar Chowdury of Australian National University.

So how does the Gen Z war end?

Pollsters said it could drag on unless governments addressed core issues such as home affordability and precarious employment. One cited young men’s health as another policy challenge, especially high suicide rates.

Lee, of King’s College, said the divide could make consensus on over-arching tax and welfare reforms harder to achieve.

“If the future generation is ever so divided along the lines of gender and then refuses to engage with each other to build social consensus, I do not think we can successfully tackle these huge issues,” she said. — Reuters

WASHINGTON — US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced on Wednesday the United States will start “aggressively” revoking visas of Chinese students, including those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields.

If applied to a broad segment of the hundreds of thousands of Chinese university students in the United States, the move could disrupt a major source of income for American schools and a crucial pipeline of talent for US technology companies.

President Donald J. Trump’s administration has sought to ramp up deportations and revoke student visas as part of wide-ranging efforts to fulfill its hardline immigration agenda.

In a statement, Rubio said the State department will also revise visa criteria to enhance scrutiny of all future visa applications from China and Hong Kong.

“The US State department will work with the Department of Homeland Security to aggressively revoke visas for Chinese students,” he said.

The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

China’s foreign ministry previously vowed to “firmly safeguard the legitimate rights and interests” of its students overseas, following the Trump administration’s move to revoke Harvard University’s ability to enroll foreign students, many of whom are Chinese.

China is also at the epicenter of Mr. Trump’s global trade war that has roiled financial markets, upended supply chains and fueled risks of a sharp worldwide economic downturn. The decision to cancel Chinese student visas comes despite a recent pause in the US-China trade dispute.

International students — India and China together accounting for 54% of them — contributed more than $50 billion to the US economy in 2023, according to the US Department of Commerce.

UNIVERSITY TIES TO CHINA UNDER SCRUTINY
The State department has broad authority to issue and revoke visas. The administration last week cited Harvard University’s ties to China as among several reasons for revoking its ability to enroll foreign students, a move temporarily blocked by a US judge.

Mr. Rubio’s statement did not offer details on how extensively the visa revocations would be applied. Even a relatively small number could disrupt the flow of Chinese students seeking out higher education in the US that began in the late 1970s from Communist-governed China.

Recent decades saw the United States become the destination of choice for many Chinese students looking for an alternative to China’s intensely competitive university system and drawn to the strong reputation of US schools. Those students typically come from wealthier families able to afford the high cost of US universities.

Many of those have stayed after graduating and have been credited with contributing to American research capacity and the US workforce.

The number of Chinese students in the US dropped to about 277,000 in 2024, however, from a high of around 370,000 in 2019, pulled lower by growing tension between the world’s two biggest economies, heightened US government scrutiny of Chinese students, and the COVID-19 pandemic.

As the US-China geopolitical rivalry has escalated into what many analysts consider a new form of cold war, US agencies and Congress have stepped up scrutiny of China’s state-sponsored influence and technology transfers at American colleges and universities.

Washington has become increasingly concerned that Beijing uses open and federally funded research environments in the US to circumvent export controls and other national security laws.

Greater scrutiny and uncertainty over visas has led more Chinese students to opt for schools in Europe, and more graduates now return to China to ply their trades.

Yaqiu Wang, a US-based human rights researcher who came to the US from China as a student, said Beijing had indeed taken advantage of US academic openness to engage in espionage and intellectual property theft, but called Mr. Rubio’s announcement “deeply concerning.”

“Broad revocations and blanket bans would not only jeopardize the rights and livelihoods of Chinese students studying and working in the US, but also risk undermining America’s long-standing position as the global leader in scientific innovation,” she said.

During Mr. Trump’s first administration, then Secretary of State Mike Pompeo led a drive to rid US university campuses of Chinese government-funded Confucius Institute cultural centers, saying they worked to advance China’s “global propaganda and malign influence” and to recruit “spies and collaborators.”

As a result, many US institutions cut ties with the centers.

On Tuesday, Reuters reported the US Department of State had halted new appointments for all foreign student and exchange visitor visa applicants, according to an internal cable.

The Trump administration has expanded social media vetting of foreign students and is seeking to ramp up deportations and revoke student visas as part of wide-ranging efforts to fulfill its hardline immigration agenda. — Reuters