Two fronts opened in Donald Trump's trade war this week, according to reporting by the New York Times. On Friday, tariffs of between 10% and 12.5% took effect on goods from more than 80 countries, replacing a global 10% duty that had expired at the same moment. Separately, the president has set 19 August as the date for new 50% tariffs on roughly $20 billion of Canadian exports, one of the steepest single-country duties imposed since the Supreme Court struck down his broadest tariff programme earlier this year.
The Times reports that the new global duties were issued under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, a law that allows a president to tariff countries found to engage in unreasonable or discriminatory trade practices. This time, the administration's justification is different from the reciprocal tariffs that once caused an uproar. According to the Times, officials point to the failure of countries, including Canada and the European Union, both hit with 10% duties, to properly enforce laws banning imports made with forced labour. Both Ottawa and Brussels already have such bans in place, the Times notes, with the EU's set to take effect in December 2027, but US officials argue enforcement has been inadequate.
Critics quoted by the Times see the forced-labour justification as a convenient legal vehicle rather than the real motivation. Peter Harrell, a visiting scholar at Georgetown Law and a former Biden administration official, told the paper that the narrow gap between the tariff rates imposed on Canada and the EU on one hand and China on the other suggested the investigation was "a pretext" for tariffs Trump wanted to impose regardless. Senator Ron Wyden, a Democrat, told a congressional hearing this week that the administration should look at its own labour enforcement record before invoking the issue against others, according to the Times.
A pattern of shifting legal ground
This is at least the third distinct legal basis the administration has used for a broad tariff programme in the space of a year, per the Times's reporting. Trump's original "Liberation Day" tariffs relied on an international emergency powers law, struck down by the Supreme Court in February, which also ordered roughly $160 billion in tariff revenue refunded. He then turned to Section 122 of the same 1974 trade act, a balance-of-payments provision never previously used for tariffs and capped at 150 days, a limit that expired this week. That approach was also ruled unlawful by a federal trade court in May, though the administration has been allowed to keep collecting the tax while it appeals. Section 301, the authority now underpinning the 80-country tariffs, is comparatively battle-tested, having survived challenges during Trump's first term, though the Times notes it has never before been used this broadly, against dozens of countries simultaneously.
The Canadian tariffs rest on yet another legal foundation entirely, the Times reports: Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930, the Smoot-Hawley law widely blamed by historians for deepening the Great Depression, and a provision that appears not to have been used since the late 1940s. Trump's complaints against Canada, as detailed by the Times, centre on a 25% Canadian tariff on American cars and trucks introduced in response to earlier US duties, a dairy trade dispute over European access to the Canadian market, and the decision by eight of Canada's ten provinces to pull American beer, wine and spirits from government liquor store shelves. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has said Canada "has merely matched" measures Trump imposed first, and the two leaders agreed this week to intensify negotiations, according to the Times, even as premiers in Ontario and British Columbia rule out restocking American alcohol without a new trade deal.
Legal scholars cited by the Times expect further court challenges to both the Section 301 and Section 338 actions, given how far each stretches from its original statutory purpose. US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer told a Senate hearing this week, as reported by the Times, that the "specific authorities" the administration uses "have changed, but the trade strategy has not." For now, that strategy appears designed to outpace the courts rather than wait for them, with the administration already preparing a further round of Section 301 tariffs against 15 more countries and the EU, the Times reports, even as the legality of its current measures remains unresolved.
Source: The New York Times
