The Trump administration will impose tariffs of about 10% on goods from more than 80 countries on Friday, its latest attempt to implement an expansive protectionist policy that has been repeatedly challenged in court.
The tariffs will range from 10% to 12.5% and take effect at 12.01am on Friday, replacing a global 10% duty set to expire at the same time. Trump issued that tariff earlier in February, after the Supreme Court struck down tariffs imposed last year.
The move provides fresh evidence of Trump’s intent to transform global trade, despite numerous court challenges and protests from U.S. consumers and businesses that have been forced to pay higher taxes. Over the past 17 months, the Trump administration has gone through one series of trade laws after another in an effort to build a system to protect the American economy from foreign competition.
The tariffs will be issued under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, which allows the president to impose tariffs on foreign countries that engage in unreasonable or discriminatory trade practices. The administration has cited the failure of foreign countries to pass or enforce laws banning the importation of goods made with forced labor in their countries, saying this disadvantages U.S. businesses that follow such laws.
Canada, which will be subject to a 10% tariff under the deal, already bans the import of goods resulting from forced labor. The European Union, also at 10%, has a ban due to take effect in December 2027. But Trump officials say governments have not effectively enforced those laws.
The United States probably has the strongest restrictions on forced labor imports of any country. It has banned the importation of goods made with slave labor for nearly a century, although it still allows prison labor under conditions that labor organizations consider coercive. In 2021, the United States passed a law banning imports from a region of China where it had found forced labor was rampant.
The Trump administration also pushed Canada and Mexico to adopt a ban on imports made using forced labor as part of previous trade negotiations, and 10 other countries have committed to bans as part of trade deals negotiated over the past year, a senior administration official said.
But critics argue that the United States also has shortcomings in job protection. And some say the administration resorted to forced labor simply as the cheapest way to reimpose tariffs struck down by the Supreme Court.
Peter Harrell, a visiting scholar at Georgetown Law School and former Biden administration official, said the small tariff differential between Canada and the European Union on one side and China on the other “suggests that USTR is using this forced labor investigation as a pretext to impose the tariffs that Trump wants to impose because of his economic theories and preferences.”
“It’s not really forced labor,” he added.
While Jamieson Greer, the U.S. trade representative, and other U.S. officials have said publicly that they cannot prejudge the outcome of the trade investigations, administration officials have privately reassured several foreign governments that their tariffs will end up being the same as deals negotiated last year, people familiar with the discussions said.
“Trump’s next trade plan is to order USTR to rebuild its illegal global tariffs under the guise of addressing forced labor,” Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, said at a congressional hearing on Wednesday. “If the administration wants to take forced labor seriously, the first step is to examine its own enforcement record.”
The new tariffs will exempt oil and gas and some domestic resources, as well as goods already covered by the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or the national security-related tariffs Trump has imposed on automobiles, steel and other goods.
More tasks are likely to arrive in the coming weeks. The administration has proposed another round of tariffs, again using Section 301, on 15 countries and the European Union to offset what the White House calls unfair practices in their manufacturing sectors. An administration official said Thursday that an investigation was ongoing.
Trump has long argued that U.S. tariffs on imports were unfairly low, and he came into office intending to transform that system. But his efforts have been met with numerous arrests, recaptures and setbacks, indicating that a president’s legal authority over tariff policy is somewhat limited.
The Constitution gives Congress the power to regulate commerce, but lawmakers have written numerous laws that allow the president to issue tariffs under certain circumstances. But typically, such laws are designed to help the president address unfair trade practices in certain countries or industries, not to wholesale replace the U.S. tariff system.
Harrell said Trump’s use of Section 301 is much broader than the statute intended and will likely be challenged in court. While Section 301 was supposed to be used to create leverage to push a country to address an unfair trade practice, he said, “Trump is reinterpreting the statute to try to impose perpetual tariffs on almost all imports.”
“They’re showing that they can run faster on tariffs than the courts will, and they’re going to force the courts to keep playing catch-up,” he added.
The Supreme Court invalidated Trump’s favored legal tool in February, when it declared his use of an international emergency law to impose tariffs illegal and ordered the repayment of about $160 billion in tariff revenue. Trump had used the emergency law to announce “Deliverance Day” tariffs on foreign countries last year and to penalize Canada, Mexico and China for their real or perceived roles in funneling fentanyl to the United States.
After the Supreme Court decision, Trump turned as a stopgap to Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, a law that had never before been used to impose tariffs. Section 122 allows the president to impose a tariff to address balance of payments problems, but has a 150-day time limit that expires early Friday morning.
Trump’s use of Section 122 has also faced legal challenges. A group of small businesses and a coalition of states sued the administration, arguing that the government did not meet the law’s stringent criteria. In May, a majority of federal trade court judges agreed, ruling Trump’s second major tariff defeat.
The administration appealed the decision, and the courts allowed the government to continue collecting the 10% tax on imports as the appeal proceeds.
The provision the administration will turn to next, Section 301, is more tested. Trump used it to impose tariffs on China during his first term, and its use has survived numerous court challenges. But it has never before been used so radically, to issue tariffs on dozens of countries at once.
The administration also addressed another obscure trade bill earlier this week, when Trump signed an order imposing a 50% tariff on billions of dollars in Canadian exports. The law, the Tariff Act of 1930, also known as the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, was written by Congress to protect American businesses during the onset of the Great Depression, although many historians believe it actually worsened the crisis. The Section 338 provision of the law used by the administration had never been used to impose tariffs.
Testifying to Congress on Wednesday, Greer said the administration remained intent on imposing tariffs, regardless of the legal approach.
“The specific authorities used by this administration have changed, but the trade strategy has not changed,” Greer said. “We are committed to continuing to use tariffs and negotiate deals to support the reindustrialization of our economy, protect American workers, raise their wages, and reduce our trade deficit.”
Tony Rom contributed to the reporting.