Trump claims he has ‘absolute right’ to impose new tariffs after supreme court blow | Trump tariffs
Donald Trump has claimed he has the “absolute right” to impose new tariffs after the US supreme court ruled that most of the import duties he imposed last year were illegal.
The president attacked the court late at night on Sunday, accusing it of “unnecessarily WANTED” the United States and not showing sufficient loyalty to him.
In February, the high court found that a 1977 law designed to address national emergencies did not provide legal justification for many of the tariffs the Trump administration has imposed on countries around the world.
The administration has struggled in recent weeks to reassemble its controversial trade agenda and regain economic strength.
Trump quickly imposed a 10% tariff on goods from most parts of the world under a different law, Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974. However, these expire after 150 days, in July. The president has also promised to increase this provisional tax to 15 percent, but has not yet done so.
U.S. officials last week launched a series of trade investigations that set the stage for the potential imposition of a new wave of permanent tariffs to replace the repeals.
“Our Supreme Court has made these countries very happy, but as the Court has stated, I have the absolute right to impose tariffs in another way, and I have already begun doing so,” Trump wrote on social media Sunday.
The high court’s decision did not say that the president has the absolute right to impose tariffs in any other way.
“This completely incompetent and disgraceful Court is nothing like the Supreme Court of the United States was founded by our great Founders,” Trump wrote on the Truth Social platform. “They are harming our country and will continue to do so.”
He made the post hours before U.S. officials met with their Mexican counterparts on Monday for talks on the future of their tripartite USMCA trade agreement with Canada.
Trump will also meet with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping at the end of March, following an extraordinarily turbulent year in economic relations between Washington and Beijing. However, in an interview with the Financial Times on Sunday, he suggested that the summit could be postponed and called on a number of countries, including China, to send ships to the Middle East to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
Despite the Supreme Court’s decision, the US president continued to use US economic power to attract other countries to his side. The Spanish government threatened to cut off all trade with Spain earlier this month after it refused to allow the United States to use two jointly operated bases in southern Spain to launch attacks against Iran.
