NPR News: 07-24-2026 8PM EDT

The Supreme Court struck down President Trump’s most sweeping tariffs earlier this year, but this week the administration issued a new round of import taxes by invoking a different legal authority—a law meant to counter other countries’ “unfair trade practices.” The Trump administration is now accusing all major U.S. trading partners of failing to adequately combat forced labor, which it argues justifies the new levies. Democratic Representative Richard Neal of Massachusetts dismissed the rationale as a legal pretext, calling the new tariffs “too convenient to be believed.”

New tariffs under a different legal theory

The original tariffs that the Supreme Court invalidated were broader in scope and based on different statutory authority. To replace them, the administration has turned to a trade law that allows the president to impose duties when other nations engage in what the U.S. deems unfair trade practices. In this case, the administration is claiming that every major trading partner has not done enough to fight forced labor, and that failure constitutes an unfair practice justifying tariffs. Critics, including Representative Neal, argue this is an opportunistic attempt to find any legal hook that survives judicial review. The new tariffs represent a significant escalation in trade policy, applying pressure across multiple economies simultaneously, though their legal du