The Trump administration took a major step toward replacing the global tariffs that the Supreme Court recently invalidated, announcing new investigations of unfair trading practices that will almost certainly result later this summer in permanent new taxes on U.S. imports.
Jamieson Greer, the president’s chief trade negotiator, said Wednesday that he is launching an investigation of “structural excess capacity and production in the manufacturing sectors” of China, the European Union, Japan, Mexico, South Korea, India, Taiwan, Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore, Switzerland, Norway, Indonesia, Bangladesh and Cambodia.
The investigation, which the administration previewed last month, will be conducted under Section 301 of the 1974 Trade Act. President Donald Trump relied on the same provision in his first term to impose sweeping tariffs on Chinese products, which largely remain in effect.
Greer’s announcement came less than three weeks after the Supreme Court ruled that many of the tariffs Trump imposed last year, relying on a 1977 economic emergency powers law, were unconstitutional. At the time, the president vowed to continue his campaign to reshape global trade using other legal authorities.
“The policy remains the same. The tools may change depending upon the vagaries of courts,” Greer told reporters.
Within hours of his Supreme Court defeat, the president turned to another trade tool, Section 122 of the 1974 act, to impose a global 10 percent tariff. Under the law, that measure — which Trump said he would increase to 15 percent — expires after 150 days.
Earlier this week, the Liberty Justice Center, the nonprofit legal group that successfully challenged Trump’s emergency tariffs, sued the president over the new temporary levies, saying the financial conditions required by the law had not been met.
The administration intends to conduct the new Section 301 investigation, and a second probe of U.S. trading partners’ use of forced labor, on an “accelerated time frame.” The aim is to have new tariffs ready to replace the Section 122 measures when they lapse.
The investigation, which will include public hearings and consultations with other nations, will highlight a long-standing U.S. complaint that the global trading system is allegedly tilted against American producers.
Countries such as China maintain a web of government policies that subsidize their manufacturing sectors while making it hard for U.S. companies to sell to their citizens. The result, according to the administration, is a persistent U.S. trade deficit and the decline of U.S. manufacturing.
“We need to protect American jobs, and we need to make sure we have fair trade with our trading partners,” Greer said.
The Trump administration has negotiated trade deals with most of the countries it now plans to investigate, raising the prospect of new tariffs on their goods. In his comments to reporters, Greer suggested that those levies could be used as leverage, compelling those nations to fulfill their promises to open markets and forswear the use of forced labor.
Wednesday’s announcement is just the start of the administration’s efforts to reinvent a lasting tariff regime after its Supreme Court rebuke. Greer said additional Section 301 investigations are planned, citing a Feb. 20 administration news release that listed pharmaceutical pricing practices, digital services taxes, discrimination against U.S. technology companies and ocean pollution as future subjects.
The Commerce Department is pursuing separate probes that are expected to result in tariffs on specific industries, including robotics and wind turbines.
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