ECONOMIC POLICY

Trump advisers explore vast new legal powers for global trade war

Allies of the former president are searching for legal justifications for charging duties on all imports

By Jeff Stein
May 7, 2024 at 6:00 a.m. EDT

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Donald Trump’s economic advisers are eyeing aggressive new legal justifications to impose tariffs on all imports, seeking to buttress a second-term plan that would reshape the U.S. economy, according to public and private comments by top aides.

On the campaign trail, Trump has repeatedly promised to enact a “ring” around the U.S. economy by enacting a tariff of at least 10 percent on goods imported from any other nation. Trump’s plan would target more than $3 trillion in annual imports and risks sending inflation soaring in what would likely prove the biggest escalation of trade hostilities in decades, ratcheting up the standoffs that marked his first term.

But the Constitution gives power over both taxation and regulation of foreign commerce to Congress, which complicates the extent to which the president can impose tariffs through executive action. Robert E. Lighthizer, Trump’s top trade counselor, has said publicly that the former president could invoke one of two legal theories to justify a “universal” tariff on all U.S. trading partners. Some Trump allies are concerned these efforts would not pass legal scrutiny, though, and have in recent weeks tried to find other bases for the plan, according to GOP policy analyst Doug Holtz-Eakin, as well as four additional people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations.

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By Jeff Stein
Jeff Stein is the White House economics reporter for The Washington Post. He was a crime reporter for the Syracuse Post-Standard and, in 2014, founded the local news nonprofit the Ithaca Voice in Upstate New York. He was also a reporter for Vox. Twitter https://twitter.com/jstein_wapo