Trump to raise US global tariff to 15% after Supreme Court ruling | Donald Trump News

United States President Donald Trump doubled down on his new global tariffs, raising them from 10 percent to 15 percent, days after the Supreme Court struck down his sweeping levies on imports.

The move on Saturday came as businesses and governments around the world sought repayment for the estimated $133 billion Washington has already collected.

In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump announced the increase “effective immediately” and said the move was based on a review of the “ridiculous, poorly written and extraordinarily anti-American decision” issued by the Supreme Court on Friday.

By a six-to-three vote, the court ruled that it is unconstitutional for Trump to unilaterally set and change tariffs because the power to tax rests with the US Congress.

The court’s decision struck down tariffs that Trump had imposed on nearly every country using an emergency powers law known as the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA).

trump card hit against the majority of judges as “clowns and lap dogs” in a news conference after the ruling, calling them an “embarrassment to their families.” He quickly signed an executive order — based on another statute, Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 — to impose the blanket 10 percent tariff, which begins Tuesday.

The 15 percent increase announced on Saturday is the highest rate allowed under this law.

However, these rates are limited to 150 days unless extended by Congress. No president has invoked Section 122 before, and its use could lead to further legal challenges.

It was not immediately clear whether an updated executive order was forthcoming.

The White House said the Section 122 tariffs include exemptions for certain products, including critical minerals, metals and energy products, according to the Reuters news agency.

Lawsuits

Trump wrote on Saturday that his administration would continue to work to issue other allowable tariffs.

“Over the next few months, the Trump administration will determine and issue new and legally permissible tariffs that will continue our extraordinarily successful process of making America great again,” he said.

The president has already said his administration intends to rely on two other statutes that allow import taxes on specific products or countries based on investigations into national security or unfair trade practices.

Tariffs have been central to Trump’s economic agenda, which he has used as a tool to address a range of goals — from reviving domestic manufacturing to pressuring other nations to crack down on drug trafficking, and to pushing warring countries toward peace.

He also used tariffs, or the threat of them, as leverage to extract trade concessions from foreign governments.

Federal data show the US Treasury collected more than $133 billion from the import duties the president imposed under the emergency powers law starting in December.

Since the Supreme Court’s ruling, more than a thousand lawsuits have been filed by importers in the US seeking refunds, and more cases are on the way.

While legally sound, the path forward for such claims is not straightforward, especially for smaller firms, said John Diamond, director of the Center for Tax and Budget Policy at Rice University.

“It’s pretty clear that they will win in court, but it will take some time,” Diamond said. “Once we get the court orders in place, I don’t think those refunds will be as messy for larger firms. Smaller firms are going to have a much harder time getting through the process.”

But foreign governments run “the real mess,” Diamond said.

“What do you do if you’re Taiwan, or Great Britain, and you have this existing trade agreement, but now it’s kind of turned upside down?”

The US-Taiwan trade deal lowers the general tariff on Taiwanese goods from 20 percent to 15 percent, the same level as Asian trading partners South Korea and Japan, in exchange for Taipei agreeing to buy about $85 billion in American energy, aircraft and equipment.

The US-UK deal imposes a 10 percent tariff on imports of most British goods, and reduces higher tariffs on imports of British cars, steel and aluminium.

‘Sock Rolls of the American People’

After the Supreme Court’s ruling, Trump’s trade representative, Jamieson Greer, told Fox News on Friday that those countries must honor their agreements, even if they ask for higher tariffs than the Section 122 tariffs.

Exports to the U.S. from countries such as Malaysia and Cambodia will still be taxed at their negotiated rates of 19 percent, even though the universal rate is lower, Greer said.

Indonesia’s chief negotiator for US tariffs, Airlangga Hartarto, said the trade agreement between the countries that set the US tariffs at 19 percent, signed on Friday, remains in effect despite the court ruling.

The ruling could spell good news for countries like Brazil, which did not negotiate a deal with Washington to lower its 40 percent tariff rate but could now see its tariff rate drop to 15 percent, at least temporarily.

Governments around the world have responded to the Supreme Court decision – as well as Trump’s subsequent tariff announcement – ​​with a mix of cautious optimism, trepidation and frustration.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said he would coordinate a joint European stance ahead of talks with Trump in early March, while Hong Kong’s secretary for financial services and the treasury, Christopher Hiu, described the situation surrounding Trump’s new tariff moves as a “fiasco”.

With the November midterm elections in the US looming, Trump’s approval rating on his handling of the economy has steadily declined during his year in office.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll that closed Monday showed 34 percent of ‌respondents‌ said they approved of Trump’s handling of the economy, while 57 percent said they disapproved.

Democrats, who need to flip only three seats in the US House of Representatives in November to win a majority, have blamed Trump’s tariffs for exacerbating the rising cost of living.

They were quick to condemn Trump’s new tariff threat on Saturday.

Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee accused Trump of “sobbing the American people” with his just-announced higher tariff.

“A little over 24 hours after his rates were declared illegal, he’s doing everything he can to make sure he can still cover your costs,” they wrote on social media.

Gavin Newsom, Democratic governor of California, a Trump foe, added that “he (Trump) doesn’t care about you.”