President Donald Trump announced Saturday he is raising a global U.S. import tariff to 15% after a ruling this week by the Supreme Court.
Greg Norman-Diamond for Fox Business:
In a 6-3 decision Friday, the Supreme Court rejected the president’s authority to issue sweeping tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. In response, Trump announced a 10% global tariff, citing a different law.
“It is my Great Honor to have just signed, from the Oval Office, a Global 10% Tariff on all Countries, which will be effective almost immediately,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post Friday evening.
The order was issued under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 and applies in addition to the standard tariffs that are already in place, the president announced during a White House press briefing Friday afternoon.
MacDailyNews Take: Of course, U.S. import tariffs significantly impact Apple primarily by increasing costs on imported components and finished products (like iPhones, iPads, and MacBooks), which are largely manufactured in China and other Asian countries.
Trump’s increase of the global import tariff from 10% to 15% represents a continued push to address perceived trade imbalances, using authority under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 following the Supreme Court’s recent ruling limiting other tariff powers.
The move applies broadly to imports from most countries, though certain exemptions exist for key goods, and remains temporary (up to 150 days) unless extended by Congress.
There are multiple potential avenues for continuing or replacing the Section 122 tariffs after their 150-day limit (ending around late July 2026), as Congress is unlikely to extend them due to political opposition and procedural hurdles.
The Trump administration views the current 15% global tariff as a temporary “bridge” to allow time for launching investigations and imposing more durable tariffs under other authorities, primarily:
• Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, which targets unfair trade practices (e.g., intellectual property theft or discriminatory policies) and has been used extensively in the past for country- or sector-specific duties after investigations by the U.S. Trade Representative.
• Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, for national security-based tariffs (already applied to items like steel, aluminum, and potentially autos), which could be expanded or adjusted following reviews.
Trump has stated that during the coming months, the administration will “determine and issue the new and legally permissible Tariffs,” with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent describing Section 122 as a short-term measure to maintain revenue while studies under Sections 301 and 232 proceed.
There are several theoretical workarounds, like letting the tariffs lapse and re-declaring a new balance-of-payments “emergency” under Section 122 to restart the clock. This could face legal challenges, but, importantly, isn’t explicitly prohibited by the statute.
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Dementia Don
What happened to 500% cut to drug prices?
Funny, in the FOX news video included by MDN, the commentators actually do more to contradict Trump and MDN’s take.
The global discontent with Dozy Don continues 🙂
No sane American cares about what the globalists think. Only effeminate soyboys and AWFLs waste their time worrying about that kind of bullshit.
“Funny, I don’t think about you at all.” – President Trump to “global discontent”
America First, bless your heart.
America finally has a president willing to use its economic power to achieve important goals intended to benefit American citizens. Imagine that.
MAGA.
It’s turning into a familiar ritual. President Trump imposes fresh tariffs, often announced on social media late at night, and within seconds the decision is condemned by officials and politicians from Brussels to Paris, Beijing, Berlin, and London.
There are dramatic warnings about how trade wars benefit no one, accompanied by solemn declarations that Europe will not be bullied, and elegies for the “rules-based order.” The financial press dutifully chronicles the “chaos” and “unpredictability” of American trade policy, while CNN books another expert to explain why it cannot possibly work and the Financial Times runs yet another column about how the United States is only damaging itself.
Then, a few weeks later, buried somewhere on page 17, a different story starts to emerge: Germany has agreed to new defense procurement commitments; France is reconsidering agricultural protections; the European Union is suddenly open to renegotiating its digital services tax. Another trade relationship is quietly restructured, and on terms remarkably favorable to Washington. The opposition, it turns out, is mainly just for show. Behind the scenes a new consensus is starting to emerge. The Trump administration is quietly building a new global trading system—it’s just that nobody wants to talk about it.
European leaders routinely denounce Trump’s tariffs and “America First” rhetoric with an over-the-top passion that would get them thrown out of drama school. Yet their finance ministers are simultaneously reworking trade agreements in ways that previous American administrations spent decades failing to achieve. The disconnect between the public theater and private reality has become so vast that one might reasonably conclude the confected outrage itself serves a purpose—providing political cover for concessions that would otherwise be impossible to explain to domestic audiences.
A few examples help illustrate what is actually happening. The U.S. has spent years trying to persuade Germany to increase its military spending, to little effect. But over the last 12 months, Germany has ramped up its spending by €80 billion a year. Sure, there is lots of rhetoric about how it will “Buy European” and about how the money will reboot its industrial base. But in reality about 8% of the money will be spent on American kit, including F-35 fighter jets, P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft, and Tomahawk cruise missiles. It doesn’t really matter who makes the boots. It is the high-tech equipment that really counts, and much of that will be American.
It represents a fundamental shift in German industrial policy, and one that the Obama administration campaigned for in vain, that the Bush administration couldn’t extract, and that decades of NATO summits failed to deliver. Trump got it with a few threatening tweets and warnings about auto tariffs… — Matthew Lynn, Commonplace, Feb 19, 2026
Read more: https://www.commonplace.org/p/matthew-lynn-ignore-the-outrage-trumps
Being against the tariffs has nothing to do with “global discontent.”
It’s hurting US small businesses. (Small business owners brought the lawsuit.)
The New York Fed report this week similarly mirrors data from myriad sources, including from the Harvard Business School’s Tariff Tracker, which found that through October 2025, the levies added 0.76% to the Consumer Price Index, or U.S. inflation. The Kiel Institute likewise found foreign exports were absorbing only 4% of the tariff burden, leaving 96% to be eaten by U.S. buyers.
Many tariffs are completely irrational and vindictive: Brazil elects someone Trump didn’t like–slaps on a tariff. Swiss leader doesn’t use proper “tone of voice”—extra 9% tariff. Provincial Canadian politician produces an ad that hurts Trumps feelings by correctly quoting Ronald Reagan–more tariffs.
Complete misunderstanding of trade deficits.
Hurting large businesses:
Procter & Gamble announced in July 2025 it would raise prices on some of its household products like diapers and skincare due to tariffs.
General Motors reported the same month a $1.1 billion profit hit as a result of the levies.
Ford forecast adjusted earnings before interest and taxes this year will fall by as much as 36 per cent. That’s in large part due to a net tariff impact of US$2 billion, about US$500 million more than the company expected previously.
Trump Administration’s recent trade deal with Japan to lower tariffs to 15 per cent from 25 per cent has handed competitors such as Toyota Motor Corp. a large cost advantage over Ford, when Japan’s lower labour and currency costs are factored in, according to Ford’s CEO.
Current US inflation is 2.3%, down from the 7% Biden mess.
Post-COVID inflation was a global phenomenon.
The US came out better than most.
Last year’s strong economic performance was a global phenomenon.
The US came out far worse than most.
(Canada grew twice as much. Italy grew three times as much.)
People in Alabama are richer than Canadians.
Trump’s own DOJ also admitted that the use of Section 122 was not justified during another hearing in a related lawsuit.
“Seems hard for the President to rely on the 15 percent statute (sec 122) when his DOJ in our case told the Court the opposite: “Nor does [122] have any obvious application here, where the concerns the President identified in declaring an emergency arise from trade deficits, which are conceptually distinct from balance-of-payments deficits.”
https://x.com/neal_katyal/status/2025251260840976418
Section 122 allows presidents to impose tariffs of up to 15 percent for up to 150 days to “deal with large and serious United States balance-of-payments deficits.” The Trump administration wants to pretend—or perhaps wrongly believes—that it’s the same thing as a trade deficit. It’s not.
A balance-of-payments deficit is an archaic problem that existed before the introduction of floating exchange rates for foreign currencies. “There is no rationale under Section 122 to impose tariffs,” writes Andrew McCarthy, a longtime legal analyst for National Review. “Because President Trump has no unilateral authority to order tariffs, he must meet the preconditions of Section 122 to justify levying them. He cannot. Not even close.”
Good deal. The more he angers the regular folks the more Democrats will be elected this November. Important to handcuff this maniac for the last two years.
As Chief Justice John Roberts noted in his opinion for the court, the president claimed virtually unlimited power to “impose tariffs on imports from any country, on any product, at any rate, for any amount of time.” No one person—especially a vindictive, capricious, arbitrary person—should have that power. Which is why the framers of the Constitution delegated it to Congress.
Please answer this question: Do you REALLY want the next liberal, dementia-addled president to have this same authority? Remember COVID = Emergency = Executive order forgiving student loans? Thankfully SCOTUS struck that “emergency” down too. What happens when the next progressive POTUS invokes climate change as a “national emergency” in order to steamroll ridiculous executive orders?
The Constitution gave the power of tariffs to Congress.
Congress shared some of those powers to the president through the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA).
There was a COVID emergency. It is gone now.
Do you not think our $31 trillion in debt plus our massive trade deficit pose a critical problem for the US?
The next progressive POTUS will declare some emergency. They always do.
any ceo that was as bad as trump a company would have fired and moved on by now.