Donald Trump unleashed a barrage of tariffs on US trading partners within months of returning to the presidency. (Reuters pic)WASHINGTON: Circumventing the US Supreme Court, president Donald Trump has found a way to resurrect his tariff wall in a fashion that analysts say could prove more durable to legal challenges.Just this week, Trump slapped sweeping new tariffs on 60 trading partners and saw 25% duties take effect on Brazilian products. Both cases involved an authority that has previously been used to impose levies.Trump separately tapped an untested justification for 50% tariffs on many Canadian goods.The actions and threats "underscore the president's continued affection for tariffs, and that they are not going away as long as he is in the White House," Asia Society Policy Institute senior vice-president Wendy Cutler told AFP.Trump's latest tariffs of 10% to 12.55% apply to goods from 60 economies starting Friday.They came after probes over forced labour concerns, under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974.Cutler said this has a lower likelihood of being overridden by courts, noting Trump's top trade official Jamieson Greer had carefully navigated procedural requirements before imposing duties.More concerning was Trump's targeting of Canada using the untested Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930, the Atlantic Council's Josh Lipsky told AFP.The justification was Canada's alleged discriminatory treatment of US exports, with duties effective after a month."That's more tariff-as-punishment" and could signal that Washington intends to keep less conventional tools at its disposal, Lipsky said.This is an "uncertainty generator," added Scott Lincicome of the libertarian Cato Institute.Court's reluctanceAlready, Trump's newest tariffs face legal challenges from small businesses.As courts have earlier allowed the use of Section 301 for imposing duties, arguments against Trump's latest salvo would likely focus on official findings that justified action, Lincicome said."That's just not something that courts typically want to weigh in on," he added.Still, some argue that Trump lacks such broad powers to impose sweeping tariffs.Within months of returning to the presidency, Trump unleashed a barrage of tariffs on US trading partners.He invoked emergency economic powers to impose a swath of these duties quickly, a move deemed illegal by the high court this February…
The United States on Friday imposed new tariffs of 10% and 12.5% on goods from 60 trading partners, including the EU and China, alleging those countries failed to curb imports made by forced labor, just as a temporary 10% global tariff expired. The move is the White House's first step in efforts to rebuild President Donald Trump's near-global tariff wall after the US Supreme Court in February struck down his "reciprocal" duties of 10% to 50% imposed last year under a national emergencies law to try to shrink the US trade deficit. New tariffs had been expected, but trade partners around the world joined in strongly disputing the justification for them.
Some, however, noted they would make no difference to current levies or even marked a slight improvement. Bond yields edged higher as the tariffs added to inflation risk, but reaction was generally limited in financial markets more focused on the Middle East conflict. The new tariffs, announced in a Federal Register notice, cover 99.4% of US imports, but include numerous product exemptions, such as oil and gas, fertilizer and certain food items.
The US claims that trading partners had failed to clamp down on trade in goods made with forced labor passing through their supply chains, an accusation those countries deny. "The United States has had a forced labor import ban for nearly a century, and rigorously enforces it. It's well past time for our trading partners to do the same," US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said in a statement.
"Today's action will begin to correct what is both a human rights abuse and distortive trade practice to improve the welfare of workers everywhere." Imposed under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, the new duties allow the administration to maintain a tariff floor on virtually all US imports despite the Supreme Court setback. The tariffs are also likely to face less legal risk as Section 301 has survived prior court challenges. Trump's temporary 10% global tariff expired at 12:01 a.m.
EDT on Friday (0401 GMT) after 150 days. The new duties took effect at that exact same moment, with goods in transit exempted until 12:01 a.m. TARIFF DETAILS The US imposed a 10% duty on goods of Argentina, Bangladesh, Britain, Cambodia, Canada, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, India, Indonesia, Jordan, Malaysia, Mexico, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Trinidad and Tobago saying…
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