The Trump administration is preparing to unveil a fresh round of tariffs on roughly sixty countries as early as this week, relying on a forced-labor trade investigation to sidestep the legal authority the Supreme Court struck down earlier this year. The move represents the latest step in a broader strategy to rebuild the president’s global tariff regime through older, more legally durable statutes after the Court ruled his emergency-powers-based tariffs unlawful. Critics argue the workaround illustrates an administration determined to achieve its trade policy goals regardless of judicial limits placed on its authority.
Story Highlights
- The administration plans new tariffs of 10 to 12.5 percent on roughly 60 countries based on a Section 301 forced-labor investigation
- The move comes as a temporary 10 percent global tariff, imposed after the Supreme Court struck down broader duties, expires this week
- The administration has also imposed a 50 percent tariff on Canadian goods and a 25 percent tariff on Brazilian imports using separate legal authorities
- Trade Representative Jamieson Greer’s investigation found 60 economies, including the EU, China, and India, failed to adequately ban forced-labor goods
What Happened
The Trump administration is preparing to unveil a new wave of tariffs on roughly sixty countries as soon as this week, according to multiple reports, using a forced-labor practices investigation conducted by the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative under Jamieson Greer to establish legal grounds that do not depend on the emergency powers the Supreme Court rejected earlier this year. The move follows the Court’s February ruling that Trump’s sweeping global tariffs, imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act following his 2025 “Liberation Day” announcement, exceeded his statutory authority, since only Congress can authorize such tariffs under the Constitution.
Following that ruling, the administration quickly pivoted to a temporary 10 percent global tariff under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, a provision intended to address balance-of-payments crises that allows duties of up to 15 percent for a maximum of 150 days without requiring lengthy investigations. That temporary measure is set to expire this week, prompting the administration’s rush to implement a more durable replacement built on statutory authority less vulnerable to judicial challenge.
Greer’s forced-labor investigation determined that sixty economies, including Australia, Canada, the European Union, the United Kingdom, India, China, and Russia, had failed to adequately ban the import of goods produced with forced labor. Under the administration’s proposal, countries found to have only partial bans on such practices would face a 10 percent tariff, while countries with no prohibitions at all would face a steeper 12.5 percent duty, figures that closely mirror the rates previously imposed under the now-invalidated emergency powers regime.
The forced-labor tariffs represent only one prong of a broader multi-track strategy. The administration has separately imposed a 50 percent tariff on a range of Canadian goods, including wine, hockey sticks, and cement, under Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930, and a 25 percent tariff on Brazilian imports under a Section 301 investigation into unfair trade practices, a measure tied to lingering tensions over the prosecution of former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro. A separate, still-pending investigation into global excess manufacturing capacity has swept in an even broader list of trading partners, including the European Union, China, Japan, India, Mexico, South Korea, Vietnam, Taiwan, Switzerland, Norway, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Cambodia, and Bangladesh, potentially setting the stage for further duties down the road.
Why It Matters
The administration’s tariff strategy raises fundamental questions about executive accountability and the durability of judicial checks on presidential authority. Having lost at the Supreme Court on the grounds that emergency powers cannot substitute for congressionally authorized tariff authority, the administration’s rapid pivot to alternative statutory mechanisms suggests an approach explicitly designed to achieve the same policy outcomes the Court found unlawful, even if through different legal vehicles.
For American consumers and businesses, the practical effect of the new tariffs may closely resemble the original, invalidated regime, since the proposed rates on many affected countries approach or match the levels previously struck down. This raises concerns among trade policy analysts that the administration is using procedurally more cumbersome laws to functionally reconstruct a tariff wall that a Supreme Court majority explicitly found exceeded presidential authority.
For Congress, which holds constitutional authority over tariffs and trade policy, the administration’s strategy of relying on decades-old statutory provisions such as Sections 301, 232, and 338 tests the boundaries of how much discretion lawmakers intended to delegate to the executive branch when those laws were originally passed, long before their current use as tools for broad-based global tariffs was contemplated.
For American allies and trading partners, the pattern of escalating tariffs against both adversarial and allied nations alike, including Canada and the European Union, signals that the administration intends to maintain an aggressive trade posture despite legal setbacks, complicating diplomatic and economic relationships even with longstanding partners.
Economic and Global Context
The economic stakes of the tariff strategy are substantial. When stacked together, the various duties targeting individual countries like Brazil could approach a combined 37.5 percent tariff rate, a figure that begins to approach the roughly 50 percent tariffs the Supreme Court struck down as unlawful in 2025, according to trade policy analysts who have tracked the administration’s layered approach.
The inflationary consequences of the earlier, invalidated tariffs were significant enough that the administration was forced to expand exemptions for consumer staples, including all forms of coffee and organic honey, after backlash over rising grocery prices. Whether the new forced-labor and Section 301-based tariffs will include similar carve-outs remains unclear, though the pattern suggests policymakers remain sensitive to the political cost of visible price increases on everyday goods.
Globally, the administration’s targeting of sixty economies simultaneously, spanning close allies and major trading partners across Europe, Asia, and the Americas, represents one of the broadest tariff actions attempted since the original “Liberation Day” tariffs were struck down, with foreign policy analysts noting that the cumulative effect may ultimately restore global tariff levels close to where they stood before the Supreme Court’s ruling.
Financial markets have shown increasing sensitivity to the drawn-out legal and political battle over tariff authority, with businesses reliant on international supply chains facing continued uncertainty about which duties will ultimately survive judicial review, given that each of the new legal mechanisms remains subject to potential future court challenges.
Implications
In the coming days, expect the administration to formally announce the new forced-labor tariffs before the current 10 percent global levy expires, with affected countries likely to respond through a mix of diplomatic protest, retaliatory tariff threats, and continued negotiation, as has been the pattern with Brazil and Canada.
For businesses that rely on imported goods, particularly in industries like electronics, apparel, and agriculture where forced-labor supply chain concerns are most acute, the new tariffs introduce both direct cost increases and considerable uncertainty about long-term compliance requirements tied to the underlying forced-labor investigations.
For congressional Republicans, many of whom have been reluctant to challenge the administration’s trade agenda despite constitutional concerns about executive tariff authority, the continued reliance on statutory workarounds may eventually prompt renewed debate over legislative efforts to reclaim tariff-setting authority more explicitly, particularly if consumer price impacts become a more prominent midterm election issue.
For international trading partners, the layered and expanding nature of the tariff campaign, spanning national security, unfair trade practice, and forced-labor justifications, suggests that legal challenges and diplomatic friction with the United States are likely to persist well beyond this week’s announcement, regardless of how courts eventually rule on the newest set of duties.
Sources
“Trump is poised to launch new tariffs that sidestep Supreme Court”
