The Trump administration declared new trade investigations on Wednesday, on China, Mexico, the European Union, and more than a dozen other economies, along with replacing President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs, which were recently ruled illegal by the Supreme Court.
The investigations, which are likely to be extended to additional countries, will be conducted under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer informed reporters during a call.
That legislation allows the U.S. to apply tariffs on imported goods of other countries that have been found to have been involved in unfair trade practices.
Section 301 tariffs would eliminate at least some of the reciprocal tariffs on most of the nations of the world that Trump had imposed on them last year without congressional approval.
Greer said, “The president’s trade policy remains the same.” He added, “Protect American jobs and to make sure we have fair trade with our trading partners.”
Greer added that the Section 301 probes “will cover acts, policies, and practices of certain economies relating to structural excess capacity and production in manufacturing sectors.”
He stated, “We expect that this investigation will uncover a variety of unfair trading practices related to excess capacity and production in manufacturing. Our view is that key trading partners have still production capacity that is really untethered from the market incentives of domestic and global demand.”
He indicated that this has caused high and long-lasting trade surpluses. Other economies under research, in addition to Mexico, China, and the EU, are Japan, India, Taiwan, Vietnam, South Korea, Singapore, Switzerland, Norway, Indonesia, Malaysia, Cambodia, Bangladesh, and Thailand.
Greer reported, “We do expect that there will be other Section 301 investigations on a country-specific basis, or maybe other tools or investigations that may come up. I won’t go into too much detail.”
However, Section 301 will have written comments on the probe installed in the Trade Representative Office and a hearing. Greer said, “We’ll also be consulting with our trading partners who are subject to this investigation.”
He added, “After all of that, the USTR, we will have our findings and our analysis, and we will propose, if necessary, a responsive action. Responsive action can take a number of forms. It can be tariffs, it can be fees on services, it can be other things.”
The Supreme Court, in a 6-3 ruling on February 20, stated that Trump did not have the authority to levy such duties under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA, as he had claimed he did.
Trump, a few hours after that ruling, applied an executive order that imposed a 10 percent new global tariff, under Section 122, of the Trade Act. Section 122 tariffs expire within 150 days.
In an interview with CNBC last week, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent forecasted that by August, the tariffs in the U.S. would resume at the same level as they were prior to the Supreme Court ruling.
In a statement, Bessent claimed that the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative and the Commerce Department will finalize trade related researches in the next few months, which would enable them to levy additional tariffs.
Bessent said, “It’s my strong belief that the tariff rates will be back to their old rate within five months, and those are very fulsome authorities.”
He added, “They have survived more than 4,000 legal challenges. They are slower-moving, but they are more robust.”
