Trump is moving to replace his global tariffs, targeting more than a dozen major trading partners

US President Donald Trump speaks to reporters outside the White House last month. Photo / Annabelle Gordon, for The Washington Post

The Trump Administration took a major step towards replacing the global tariffs that the Supreme Court recently invalidated, announcing new investigations of unfair trading practices that will almost certainly result later this northern summer in permanent new taxes on United States imports.

Jamieson Greer, the President’s chief trade negotiator, said today that he is launching an investigation of “structural excess capacity and production in the manufacturing sectors” of China, the European Union, Japan, Mexico, South Korea, India, Taiwan, Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore, Switzerland, Norway, Indonesia, Bangladesh and Cambodia.

The investigation, which the Administration previewed last month, will be conducted under Section 301 of the 1974 Trade Act.

US President Donald Trump relied on the same provision in his first term to impose sweeping tariffs on Chinese products, which largely remain in effect.

Greer’s announcement came less than three weeks after the Supreme Court ruled that many of the tariffs Trump imposed last year, relying on a 1977 economic emergency powers law, were unconstitutional.

At the time, the US President vowed to continue his campaign to reshape global trade using other legal authorities.

“The policy remains the same. The tools may change depending upon the vagaries of courts,” Greer told reporters.

Within hours of his Supreme Court defeat, the President turned to another trade tool, Section 122 of the 1974 act, to impose a global 10% tariff. Under the law, that measure - which Trump said he would increase to 15% - expires after 150 days.

Earlier this week, the Liberty Justice Centre, the non-profit legal group that successfully challenged Trump’s emergency tariffs, sued the President over the new temporary levies, saying the financial conditions required by the law had not been met.

The Administration intends to conduct the new Section 301 investigation, and a second probe of US trading partners’ use of forced labour, on an “accelerated time frame”.

And the aim is to have new tariffs ready to replace the Section 122 measures when they lapse.

The investigation, which will include public hearings and consultations with other nations, will highlight a long-standing US complaint that the global trading system is allegedly tilted against American producers.

Countries such as China maintain a web of government policies that subsidise their manufacturing sectors while making it hard for US companies to sell to their citizens. The result, according to the Administration, is a persistent US trade deficit and the decline of US manufacturing.

“We need to protect American jobs, and we need to make sure we have fair trade with our trading partners,” Greer said.

The Trump Administration has negotiated trade deals with most of the countries it now plans to investigate, raising the prospect of new tariffs on their goods.

In his comments to reporters, Greer suggested that those levies could be used as leverage, compelling those nations to fulfil their promises to open markets and for swear the use of forced labour.

Today’s announcement is just the start of the Administration’s efforts to reinvent a lasting tariff regime after its Supreme Court rebuke.

Greer said additional Section 301 investigations are planned, citing a February 20 Administration news release that listed pharmaceutical pricing practices, digital services taxes, discrimination against US technology companies and ocean pollution as future subjects.

The Commerce Department is pursuing separate probes that are expected to result in tariffs on specific industries, including robotics and wind turbines.

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