United States President Donald Trump has doubled down on his new global tariffs, raising them from 10 percent to 15 percent, days after the Supreme Court struck down his sweeping levies on imports.
The move on Saturday came as businesses and governments around the world sought repayment for the estimated $133bn that Washington has already collected.
In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump announced the raise “effective immediately” and said the move was based on a review of the “ridiculous, poorly written and extraordinarily anti-American decision” issued by the Supreme Court on Friday
By a six-to-three vote, the court had ruled that it was unconstitutional for Trump to unilaterally set and change tariffs, because the power to tax lies with the US Congress.
The court’s decision struck down tariffs that Trump had imposed on nearly every country using an emergency powers law, known as the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA).
Trump railed against the majority justices as “fools and lapdogs” in a news conference after the ruling, calling them an “embarrassment to their families”. He quickly signed an executive order – resting on a different statute, Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 – to impose the blanket 10 percent tariff, starting on Tuesday.
The 15 percent hike announced on Saturday is the highest rate allowed under that law.
However, those tariffs are limited to 150 days unless they are extended by Congress. No president has previously invoked Section 122, and its use could lead to further legal challenges.
It was not immediately clear whether an updated executive order was forthcoming.
The White House said the Section 122 tariffs include exemptions for certain products, including critical minerals, metals and energy products, according to the Reuters news agency.
Lawsuits
Trump wrote on Saturday that his administration will continue to work on issuing other permissible tariffs.
“During the next short number of months, the Trump Administration will determine and issue the new and legally permissible Tariffs, which will continue our extraordinarily successful process of Making America Great Again,” he said.
The president has already said his administration intends to rely on two other statutes that permit import taxes on specific products or countries based on investigations into national security or unfair trade practices.
Tariffs have been central to Trump’s economic agenda, which he has used as a tool to address a range of goals – from reviving domestic manufacturing to pressuring other nations to crack down on drug trafficking, and pushing warring countries toward peace.
He has also wielded tariffs, or the threat of them, as leverage to extract trade concessions from foreign governments.
Federal data shows the US Treasury had collected more than $133bn from the import taxes the president has imposed under the emergency powers law as of December.
Since the Supreme Court’s ruling, more than a thousand lawsuits have been filed by importers in the US to seek refunds, and more cases are on the way.
While legally sound, the path forward for such claims is not straightforward, especially for smaller firms, said John Diamond, director of the Center for Tax and Budget Policy at Rice University.
“It’s pretty clear that they will win in court, but it’ll take some time,” Diamond said. “Once we get the court orders in effect, I don’t think those refunds will be all that messy for larger firms. Smaller firms are going to have a much more difficult time getting through the process.”
(Al Jazeera)
