In the first nine months of the second Trump administration, the United States applied additional tariffs to much1 of its imports at an average duty rates of 17.9% that had last been applied as far back as 1940. The US began collecting additional duties of about $30 billion per month more than what it had collected just a few months earlier. Just the tariffs collected under IEEPA, the Trump choice of emergency authority, would bring in well over an additional $1 trillion over the next ten years.
The Trump Administration took this action in violation of its international obligations under the WTO and GATT. These were not minor alleged infractions, an ill-founded dumping case, or even an aggressive anti-subsidy or a safeguard action. This was a wholesale undeclared renunciation of the rules the United States had led the world to adopt, the very basis for the trading system it had built. How had this dramatic turn of events come about?
1 As calculated by the New York Times, 29 % of US imports are currently subject to emergency tariffs, and in addition10% of imports are subject to designated industry tariffs.
