WASHINGTON >> Shortly after a federal trade court declared many of President Donald Trump’s tariffs to be illegal, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick took to television to brush aside the setback.

“It cost us a week, maybe,” Lutnick said this month on Fox News, noting that other countries remained eager to strike new deals despite tariffs being in legal jeopardy.

“Everybody came right back to the table,” he added.

With the fate of the president’s tariffs hanging in the balance, the Trump administration has tried to project dueling narratives. Top aides have insisted publicly that their negotiations remain unharmed, even as some of those same officials have pleaded with the court to spare Trump from reputational damage on the global stage.

The strategy faced two crucial tests Monday. Lutnick and other top advisers met with their Chinese counterparts in London in the hopes of hammering out a new trade deal, and lawyers for the administration were expected to urge a federal appeals court anew to keep its tariffs in place.

The court could factor in “any sort of public statements the administration makes” as it decides whether to preserve existing tariffs as the case plays out, said Ted Murphy, a co-leader of the trade practice at the law firm Sidley Austin.

While Murphy said it remained to be seen how judges would view the government’s recent bullishness, he added that a decision that invalidated the president’s tariffs could “weaken the U.S. position” abroad.

Are they legal?

Trump’s top aides have long maintained that they possess a range of authorities they can use to issue tariffs and reorient global trade. But they have also tried to impress on federal judges that any limitation to those powers could severely undercut the president.

“Allies and adversaries alike monitor U.S. courts for signs of constraints on presidential power,” Lutnick warned in a sworn filing with a lower court in late May.

Jamieson Greer, the U.S. trade representative, put it more bluntly. A decision that halted tariffs, he said in the same filing, “would create a foreign policy disaster scenario.”

One week later, Greer projected a more confident tone on CNBC.

“All the other countries I’m dealing with in negotiations are treating this as just kind of a bump in the road rather than any fundamental change,” he said.

Spokespeople for the White House, the Commerce Department and the U.S. trade representative did not respond to requests for comment.

What’s at stake

The legal wrangling carries great stakes for Trump, who has waged his global trade war in an effort to increase domestic manufacturing, raise trillions of dollars in new revenue and force other countries to strike beneficial trade agreements with the United States.

To issue those duties swiftly, and without limit, the president has relied extensively on a 1970s law known as the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which is primarily used to institute embargoes and sanctions.

Trump said that a number of crises — such as the nation’s trade deficit and the flow of fentanyl into the United States — justified his novel application of the statute, which does not mention the word tariff explicitly.

A group of small businesses and a coalition of states each sued over the tariffs in April at the Court of International Trade, which rejected the Trump administration’s interpretation of the law one month later. The panel of judges found Trump did not have “unbounded authority” to issue such expansive tariffs under the emergency law, and it ordered Trump to unwind the duties.

The government quickly appealed.

The next day, an appeals court issued a temporary stay that left the tariffs intact while the court begins to consider the government’s request for a longer-term pause, as well as the fuller merits of the case.

Even before the appeals court could begin to parse the legal arguments, the White House signaled that it planned to take the matter to the Supreme Court if necessary.

The legal challenge still threatened to upend Trump’s efforts to strike what his aides once promised would be 90 deals in 90 days.

For now, the president plans to reinstate his expansive “reciprocal” tariffs targeting every major U.S. trading partner in July.

The United States has managed to ink only one deal, with Britain, while other agreements remain elusive.