New Delhi: US President Donald Trump raised his newly imposed global tariff to 15% on Saturday, maxing out the statutory ceiling of the legal provision he had invoked just a day earlier — and signalling that steeper levies were on the way.
In a post on Truth Social, Trump said he was raising the 10% worldwide tariff he had imposed under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 “effective immediately” to the “fully allowed, and legally tested, 15% level.” He called Friday’s Supreme Court ruling that had struck down his original tariff regime “ridiculous, poorly written, and extraordinarily anti-American.”
The move comes less than 24 hours after the Supreme Court’s 6-3 ruling that Trump’s use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose sweeping tariffs on nearly every US trading partner was illegal.
Trump had responded to the ruling by invoking Section 122 to impose a 10% global tariff, but wasted little time in pushing it to its legal maximum.
In his Truth Social post, Trump said his administration would, “during the next short number of months, determine and issue the new and legally permissible tariffs” under other authorities — signalling that the 15% rate is a bridge measure rather than an end-state. At his press conference on Friday, he had already pointed to Sections 232, 301 and the Tariff Act of 1930 as the vehicles for reimposition, quoting Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s dissent that the ruling “might not substantially constrain a president’s ability to order tariffs going forward.”
Section 122, however, carries a hard statutory limit of 150 days, after which congressional approval is required to continue. Trump formally began the clock earlier on Saturday (India time) when he issued an executive order invoking the section.
Trump’s post significantly ratcheting up a global tax on imports to the US yet again was the latest sign that despite the court’s check, the Republican president was intent on continuing to wield in an unpredictable manner his favourite tool to for the economy and to apply global pressure.
Wendy Cutler, a former senior U.S. trade official and senior vice president at the Asia Society think tank, said she was surprised Trump had not gone for the maximum Section 122 rate on Friday, but that his rapid-fire change underscored the uncertainty trading partners faced.
Trump, who often describes tariffs as his favorite word, has attacked individual justices in personal terms and insisted he retained the power to impose tariffs as he sees fit.
Trump made an unusually personal attack on the Supreme Court judges who ruled against him in a 6-3 vote, including two of those he appointed during his first term, Justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett.
Trump, at a news conference on Friday, said of the two justices: “I think it’s an embarrassment to their families.”He was still seething Friday night, posting on social media complaining about Gorsuch, Coney Barrett and Chief Justice John Roberts, who ruled with the majority and wrote the majority opinion.
On Saturday morning, Trump issued another post declaring that his “new hero” was Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who wrote a 63-page dissent. He also praised Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, who were in the minority, and said of the three dissenting justices: “There is no doubt in anyone’s mind that they want to, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN.”
