President Donald Trump is rolling out new Section 301 tariffs for 60 countries as the stopgap measure he implemented in the spring is set to expire.
In February, the Supreme Court ruled that the president’s “Liberation Day” tariffs, raised under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, were unconstitutional. In response, Trump imposed a global section 122 tariff of 10%, which is mandated to expire Friday at 12:01 a.m.
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative previewed the new Section 301 tariffs later in the spring by announcing an investigation into the forced labor laws of American trading partners.
The tariffs going into effect Friday at 12:01 a.m. are split into two separate rates: countries that have not enacted forced labor laws will be subject to a 12.5% rate, while countries deemed insufficiently enforcing forced labor laws already on the books will be subject to a 10% rate.
Senior Trump administration officials told reporters on Thursday that the new Section 301 rates will not stack with the president’s existing tariffs. In other words, steel and aluminum imports will still be tariffed at 50%, not 60% or 62.5%.
Officials added that the United States is involved in negotiations with its trading partners, including the nations subject to the new 301 tariffs, about creating carve-outs via bilateral trade deals for products deemed to be critical to the U.S. economy that cannot be domestically sourced, including but not limited to certain pharmaceutical ingredients and certain energy products.
Still, critics had challenged the widely telegraphed Section 301 announcement, accusing the president of seeking means to circumvent the Supreme Court’s tariff ruling.
A senior administration official rejected that frame Thursday as being overly “simplistic.”
“This action, as you’ll see, it covers 60 countries versus the previous actions we had that were global in nature,” the administration official said. “The real message here that everyone needs to take away is the president is going to always use the tools at his disposal to achieve his trade policy objectives, and that includes tariffs.”
U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer made the point in an even more direct way while testifying on Capitol Hill earlier this week.
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“The specific authorities this administration is using have changed, but the trade strategy has not,” he told lawmakers. “We are committed to continuing to use tariffs and to negotiate deals to support the re-industrialization of our economy, protect American workers and increase their wages and shrink our trade deficit.”