A federal trade court wrestled Friday with the legality of the 10 percent global tariff President Donald Trump imposed in February after the Supreme Court struck down the sweeping tariffs he slapped on dozens of countries last year.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of International Trade sounded perplexed over whether Trump had properly invoked a 1974 law to justify the new tariffs, which can only remain in effect for 150 days.

That law allows the president to impose a global duty of up to 15 percent temporarily to address a “large and serious” balance-of-payments deficit.

Though Trump cited persistent trade deficits with foreign nations as the basis for reimposing tariffs, attorneys representing small businesses and Democratic-led states say the Nixon-era statute was meant to address narrower concerns about currency exchanges and the strength of the dollar.

The judges gave no indication of how soon they plan to rule on the duties, which are set to expire in July unless Congress acts to extend them. The White House has made clear that it intends to use the duties as a bridge until it can impose duties under different legal authorities that allow for permanent tariffs.

During a hearing that lasted nearly three hours, the panel grappled with the ambiguities of the law and the evolution of the international financial system from a time when the U.S. had significant trade surpluses — and American citizens had only recently been permitted to possess gold — to today’s stubborn trade deficits that have animated Trump’s push for widespread tariffs.

“We’re not quite sure how to translate 1974 into 2026,” Judge Timothy Stanceu said.

Despite its complexities, the dispute carries enormous ramifications for Trump’s economic agenda, which already suffered a grievous blow when the Supreme Court rejected his effort to use an emergency authority to impose broad-based tariffs on America’s trading partners without congressional approval.

The ruling left Trump flailing, attacking the Supreme Court for spurning him while claiming that the court’s ruling gave him an even stronger hand to use other mechanisms to impose alternative tariffs at even higher levels. Among those are the new 150-day tariffs he imposed worldwide, subject to exceptions for some categories of goods. (Trump also promised to increase the tariffs to 15 percent but has not done so.)

Lawyers opposing Trump’s February tariffs argued Friday that the statute, Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, is essentially obsolete.

“We think that in the use of the term ‘balance of payments’ as it was there, as it was understood in the 1970s … it does not exist today,” said Brian Marshall of the Oregon Attorney General’s Office.

But a Justice Department attorney contended Trump still has authority to use the law because trade deficits are one component of the “large and serious … balance of payments” problem that gives a president the go-ahead to impose tariffs.

“A trade deficit was a large driver of a balance of payments deficit in 1974 as it is today,” DOJ lawyer Brett Shumate said. “We’re not on the gold standard any more. We don’t have a fixed currency, but we can still have balance-of-payment problems.”

However, Marshall said the law was intended to apply to a sort of foreign-exchange emergency that no one contends exists today. “It’s really about monetary crises,” he said.

Confusion about the meaning and application of the statute dominated the hearing to such a degree that, by its conclusion, one of the lawyers opposing the tariffs urged the judges to rely on a legal theory known as the “major questions doctrine” to strike down the duties. Under that doctrine, the Supreme Court sometimes rules against government actions with a major economic impact if Congress hasn’t clearly authorized them.

“Here, we have a massive amount of power supposedly given to the president that obviously implicates vast economic and political significance, and in a situation where we have an old statute that’s never been used in this way before by any president,” said Jeffrey Schwab of the Liberty Justice Center.

“So, the ‘major questions doctrine’ would say, ‘Well, this needs to be a clear statement from Congress.’ And I think what we have maybe concluded from our three hours here is that there isn’t clear indication that the president can use Section 122” as he has, Schwab added.