“In firing up a trade war with Canada, President Donald Trump turned to a 96-year-old statute so obscure that many trade lawyers didn’t even know it was still on the books,” reports Yahoo News.
“A week ago, Trump invoked Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930 to slap a 50% tax on $20 billion worth of Canadian imports. The move prompted dollar-for-dollar retaliation from Ottawa and strained already-tense relations between the neighbors and longtime allies.”
“The president’s Section 338 tariff authority has never been used, let alone tested in court.”
“This law is literally a blank canvas because it’s never been litigated,” said Ryan Majerus, who is an international-trade lawyer and former Commerce Department official.
Yahoo News says “it’s unclear whether Trump’s latest Canada tariffs could survive a legal challenge, and some lawyers argue that the Depression-era law has been rendered obsolete by more recent trade laws.”
More at this link.
Tariffs can lead to job losses. The steel and aluminum tariffs Trump imposed back in 2018 shrank employment by 74,000 jobs, wiping out 75 times more jobs than they saved.
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