America to maintain tariffs regardless of Supreme Court ruling, says US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer

Speaking in New York on Tuesday, Greer said the Trump administration expected to win the case but would fall back on alternative legal measures to apply tariffs if it did not, The Financial Times reported. “We are very confident in the case,” Greer said. “We believe that the court will defer to the president on the emergency, the fact that tariffs can be used under this law.”

But Greer insisted that tariffs would remain “a part of the policy landscape”, and said the so-called reciprocal tariffs imposed in August represented “how it’s going to be”, according to The Financial Times. “That’s how we need to think about trade going forward, win or lose at the Supreme Court, wherever we end up,” Greer said. “This is a structure.” Greer said Trump’s current use of Section 232, which is not being challenged in the Supreme Court case, “covers a huge amount of trade in important, critical sectors”.

“We feel very confident that the president’s trade policy … will win at the court,” he added. “And if it doesn’t, we’ll be able to have the same effect.”

Amid legal challenges to the president’s use of IEEPA — which the US Court of International Trade and later the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit have already found unlawful — the administration has launched a range of investigations under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962. This has allowed the Trump administration to impose sectoral tariffs, such as on steel and aluminium. As tariffs under Section 232 are not subject to legal challenge, even an adverse Supreme Court ruling will allow the administration to retain leverage.

After imposing 50 per cent tariffs on steel, aluminium and copper using Section 232, the US Department of Commerce has imposed fresh tariffs on timber, pharmaceuticals and trucks. The product list is expected to increase going forward.

While tariffs under Section 232 would be far less sweeping than reciprocal tariffs that Trump managed under IEEPA, the former provides much stronger legal cover, as the US Supreme Court has on multiple occasions refused to entertain challenges due to the “national security” element in the statute. India has also used “national security” as a premise to restrict the entry of goods in the past, and at the WTO, what measures fall under national security has been a hotly contested issue due to its broad scope.

Earlier this year, arguing before the US Court of International Trade for the continued use of IEEPA, US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick stressed the limitations of other legal tools available to the Trump administration to tackle rising trade deficits, particularly with countries like China.

Lutnick explained that alternatives — such as Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 and Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 — are not designed for national emergencies, are procedurally time-consuming, and do not permit immediate action.

“Under Section 232, the Department of Commerce has up to 270 days to conduct an investigation and submit a report to the president, who then has up to 90 additional days to decide whether to act, and a further 15 days to implement any action. Similarly, under Section 301, the United States Trade Representative must complete an investigation within 12 months, with additional time for enforcement. IEEPA is different — it allows the president to act immediately to protect national interests, provided all conditions under IEEPA are satisfied,” Lutnick told the court.

Without this tool, the president’s ability to formulate foreign policy would be severely constrained, and national security would be at risk, he added.