Neal argued this case before the court of appeals. Here is an article posted by Neal discussing the key argument in this case.
https://www.cfr.org/article/trumps-lawyers-are-wrong-about-section-122
On July 31, before the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, Department of Justice (DOJ) lawyers spent considerable effort defending President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs by drawing a false distinction. They argued that Trump had to use the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to enact his Liberation Day tariffs because Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, which allows the president to use tariffs or quotas to address balance of payments deficits, could not do the job.
Why? The DOJ put it plainly: balance of payments deficits aren’t the same thing as trade deficits......
Congress did not make this mistake when it wrote Section 122. That provision was crafted to give presidents authority to impose tariffs or quotas in the event of serious balance-of-payments problems. The whole point was to hand the executive a tool to address the very condition the executive now calls the trade deficit. Suggesting otherwise is akin to handing the president a fire hose and insisting it can only be used for kitchen fires, not living room fires.
The stakes are high. The DOJ wants the courts to believe that Section 122 is too narrow to matter, and is only relevant when foreign exchange reserves are depleted or when the United States is running unsustainable external accounts. By contrast, they contend that the IEEPA is the only general-purpose tool for Trump’s tariffs to address trade balances.
But this is backwards. Section 122 exists precisely to prevent the misuse of emergency statutes like the IEEPA. Congress wanted presidents to address trade imbalances under defined statutory limits, not under boundless emergency powers.....
The DOJ’s attempt to wall off balance of payments from trade deficits is a legal fiction. Section 122 was written for both. Pretending otherwise is not just bad economics, it is bad law.
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