Trump Opens Tariff Probes Into 16 Trading Partners After Court Loss
Three weeks after the Supreme Court stripped his tariff authority, President Trump launched trade probes into 16 countries that could impose new duties on goods from China to Norway by summer.
Three weeks after the Supreme Court stripped his tariff authority, President Trump's administration launched new trade probes Sunday into 16 countries — a strategic maneuver that could deliver fresh import duties by summer and reshape the lives of workers, importers and consumers across the American economy.
The Section 301 investigations target China, the European Union, India, Japan, Mexico and 11 other trading partners for alleged structural excess capacity in manufacturing sectors. The move marks a deliberate pivot following the court's Feb. 20 ruling in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump, which invalidated the president's use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose tariffs. The 6-3 decision held that Congress never authorized the president to levy tariffs under that statute.
The administration's new legal footing is considerably more durable. Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 grants the trade representative broad authority to investigate and remedy unfair foreign trade practices — and tariffs imposed under it have survived sustained legal assault, including challenges from approximately 3,600 importers contesting the 25 percent tariffs on Chinese-origin goods in 2023.
"For the plaintiffs, challenging whatever the administration does here is going to be much more difficult than the IEEPA case," said Timothy Meyer, an international trade expert and Duke Law School professor.
The investigation covers industries central to American manufacturing: steel, aluminum, automobiles, semiconductors, batteries and solar modules. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer released a fact sheet listing 16 countries with significant trade surpluses with the United States, ranging from China's $202 billion surplus to Norway's $2 billion.
"The United States will no longer sacrifice its industrial base to other countries that may be exporting their problems with excess capacity and production to us," Greer said. "Today's investigations underscore President Trump's commitment to reshore critical supply chains and create good-paying jobs for American workers across our manufacturing sectors."
The clock is already running. Trump announced temporary 10 percent global tariffs on Feb. 24 using Section 122 of the Trade Act — a provision that expires 150 days after its invocation, setting a hard deadline of July 24. Greer stated the administration aims to conclude the Section 301 investigations before that date, establishing a more permanent tariff framework before the temporary measures lapse. Public comments are due April 15, with hearings scheduled for May 5–8.
One conspicuous gap in the probe is Canada. Ottawa ran a trade deficit of $31.3 billion with the United States in 2024, yet the excess capacity investigation excludes it entirely. The trade representative's office offered no explanation for the omission. Canada does appear in a separate Section 301 investigation targeting 60 countries for failures to prohibit imports produced with forced labor.
Foreign governments pushed back swiftly. "The sources of such overcapacity are well identified, and they do not lie in Europe," European Commission spokesperson Olof Gill said. Bernd Lange, chair of the European Parliament's trade committee, warned the probe could undermine the Turnberry Deal struck last summer between the U.S. and EU. China rejected the administration's argument outright, with foreign ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun calling the overcapacity charge a "false proposition" at a regular press conference.
At home, the reaction split along familiar lines. Matt Priest, CEO and president of the Footwear Distributors and Retailers of America, saw the investigations less as a fresh offensive than an act of recovery.
"With IEEPA being taken away, they've lost a lot of leverage, and they're trying to regenerate that," Priest said.
Democrats were sharper in their criticism. Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia argued the administration was misappropriating a tool designed for precision.
"Section 301 tariffs are meant to address specific and legitimate unfair trade practices," Kaine said. "They should not be used to drag the United States back into a cost-raising, broad-based tariff regime now that the Supreme Court struck down President Trump's illegal IEEPA taxes on American consumers."
The investigations may signal something larger than a legal workaround — a long-term recalibration of trade strategy away from emergency powers vulnerable to judicial review and toward the statutory authority Congress explicitly granted. John Woods, Asia chief investment officer at Lombard Odier, put it plainly.
"Section 301 will be essentially a proxy for the trade tariffs that hitherto were imposed but subsequently blocked by the Supreme Court," he said.
The public comment period opens Tuesday. For the factory workers, importers and foreign exporters watching from the sidelines, the next four months will determine whether the administration can rebuild, through statute, the tariff architecture the Supreme Court dismantled in a single ruling.