Tariffs, Trade Rules and Customs

On Friday 20 February 2026 the Supreme Court decided Learning Resources v. Trump. By six votes to three it held that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, a 1977 law that lets the president regulate transactions in a declared national emergency, does not authorise tariffs. The ruling removed the legal basis for the two families of duties that had dominated American trade for a year: the "fentanyl" tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China from February and March 2025, and the "reciprocal" tariffs announced on 2 April 2025. United States Customs and Border Protection stopped collecting IEEPA duties within days (reported). The same day the administration announced a 10% tariff on most imports under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, a balance-of-payments authority limited to 150 days, and an executive order keeping the suspension of the de minimis exemption for low-value parcels. An increase to 15%, the statutory maximum, was announced later in February but never proclaimed; CBP collected 10% from 24 February until the duty expired at 12:01 a.m. Eastern time on 24 July 2026 (trade-law sources, reported).

The road to the ruling began on 2 April 2025, which the administration called Liberation Day. A 10% baseline tariff on almost all countries took effect on 5 April; higher country-specific rates took effect on 9 April and were paused the same day for 90 days for every country except China, whose rate was raised in steps to 125%, or 145% with the fentanyl tariff, by 10 April. A US–China arrangement in Geneva on 12 May cut the Chinese reciprocal rate to 10% from 14 May, and country rates of about 10–41% took effect on 6–7 August, many set at 15% by deals with the European Union, Japan, Korea and others (reported). Importers challenged the tariffs at the Court of International Trade, which ruled against them in V.O.S. Selections v. Trump on 28 May 2025; the Federal Circuit, sitting en banc, affirmed on 29 August 2025, leaving the tariffs in place pending appeal (reported).

Underneath all of it sat the older layer. The Section 301 tariffs on Chinese goods, imposed in four lists from 6 July 2018 to 1 September 2019 at rates of 7.5% to 25%, and raised for electric vehicles, solar cells, semiconductors and other products after a four-year review in 2024, survived the ruling, because Section 301 is a trade statute with its own procedure. So did the Section 232 national-security tariffs on steel and aluminium from 23 March 2018, raised to 50% from 4 June 2025, and on autos (25% from 3 April 2025), copper (50% from 1 August 2025), medium and heavy trucks (from 1 November 2025), certain advanced chips (from 15 January 2026) and patented pharmaceuticals (up to 100% under an April 2026 proclamation, from 31 July 2026 for 17 named companies and 29 September for other importers, 15% for the EU, Japan, Korea, Switzerland and Liechtenstein, generics excluded) (reported). When Section 122 expired, the trade representative replaced it the same minute with a new Section 301 action on 60 economies, framed around their failure to ban or enforce bans on goods made with forced labour: from 24 July 2026, certain products from those economies paid 10% or 12.5%. The 10% tier covered 17 economies with a forced-labour import ban, a committed ban or a partial regime: Argentina, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Canada, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, India, Indonesia, Jorda