DONALD Trump has announced he will double the tariffs on steel and aluminium imports to 50 per cent in his latest trade war escalation.
It comes after the president’s blistering global tariffs were reinstated by a federal appeals court – just a day after they were sensationally blocked afte being ruled illegal.
AFPThe US President held up a chart of the tariffs he was implementing[/caption]
Getty Tariffs are levies paid on bringing a good or service into a country[/caption]
While addressing workers at a US Steel plant in Pennsylvania, Trump said: “We’re going to bring it from 25 per cent to 50 per cent, the tariffs on steel into the United States of America.
“Nobody’s going to get around that.”
Shortly after, Trump wrote in a Truth Social post that the elevated rate would also apply to aluminum, with the new tariffs “effective Wednesday, June 4th.”
Trump has imposed sweeping tariffs on allies and adversaries alike in moves that have rocked the world trade order.
But they became a brief legal setback earlier this week when a court ruled Trump had overstepped his authority.
However, an appellate court on Thursday said the tariffs could continue while the litigation moves forward.
The Court of Appeals released no official reasoning for the shifting decision.
The reinstating of many of the sweeping taxes means Trump can continue collecting tariffs under emergency powers law for the time being.
Trump has always said he will appeal and take the fight all the way to the Supreme Court.
Trump memorably held up a board showing rates he was about to set for individual trading partners in the White House’s Rose Garden when he announced the tariffs as part of a “liberation day”.
China was clobbered with 34 per cent tariffs, Vietnam 46 per cent, Thailand 36 per cent and Cambodia 49 per cent.
Tariffs on China were eventually increased to a whopping 145 per cent as Trump sought to begin negotiations.
Washington and Beijing then signed a trade deal, which saw both sides lower their import tariffs.
But Trump has now accused China of violating the agreement.
“The bad news is that China, perhaps not surprisingly to some, HAS TOTALLY VIOLATED ITS AGREEMENT WITH US,” Trump posted.
“So much for being Mr. NICE GUY!”
What did the court rule on Wednesday?
By Annabel Bate, Foreign News Reporter
A FEDERAL court in New York handed President Donald Trump a gargantuan setback Wednesday.
The court blocked his plan to impose massive taxes on imports from almost every country in the world.
A three-judge panel of the US Court of International Trade ruled that Trump overstepped his authority when he invoked the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act to declare a national emergency.
He attempted to use this as a way to justify the tariffs.
The US Court of International Trade has jurisdiction over civil cases involving trade, meaning its decisions can be appealed to the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington and, ultimately, to the Supreme Court.
This is where the legal challenges to Trump tariffs are expected to end up.
The administration had argued that courts had approved then-President Richard Nixon’s emergency use of tariffs in a 1971 economic and financial crisis that arose when the US suddenly devalued the dollar by ending a policy that linked the US currency to the price of gold.
The Nixon administration successfully cited its authority under the 1917 Trading With Enemy Act, which preceded and supplied some of the legal language later used in IEPPA.
The court disagreed, deciding that the President’s sweeping tariffs exceeded his authority to regulate imports under IEEPA.
It also said the tariffs did nothing to deal with problems they were supposed to address.
In their case, the states noted that America’s trade deficits hardly amount of a sudden emergency.
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