U.S. Court of International Trade CIT

The Court of International Trade descends from a Board of General Appraisers created in 1890 to resolve customs disputes, which became the U.S. Customs Court in 1926. The Customs Courts Act of 1980 renamed it and gave it the full powers of an Article III court. Its nine judges are nominated by the President, confirmed by the Senate, and serve with life tenure, and by law no more than five may come from the same political party. It sits in Manhattan but has nationwide jurisdiction and can hold trials anywhere.

The court has exclusive jurisdiction over civil cases involving imports and international trade laws: challenges to customs classifications and duties, antidumping and countervailing duty determinations by the Commerce Department and the International Trade Commission, trade adjustment assistance for workers, and other cases arising under federal trade statutes. Its decisions are appealed to the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

For most of its history the court worked in relative obscurity, but it became central in 2025 when importers and states challenged the President's use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose broad tariffs. In May 2025 a three-judge panel ruled the tariffs unlawful, the Federal Circuit largely affirmed in August 2025, and on February 20, 2026, the Supreme Court agreed, ruling 6 to 3 in Learning Resources v. Trump that the emergency law does not authorize tariffs. The court then ordered refunds with interest of the duties collected and began hearing challenges to replacement tariffs. The litigation turned on how far emergency statutes let a President set tariffs, a power the Constitution assigns to Congress.