WTO Strikes A Legal Blow Against Trump's Tariffs

On Friday, the WTO issued a series of rulings that struck at the core legal justification for Trump's steel and aluminum tariffs. The administration had argued that countries can impose tariffs based upon their own interpretation of national security interests, and that whether there actually is a legitimate national security concern can't be arbitrated by international trade courts. In a case not directly involving the United States but clearly aimed at Trump's tariff policies, however, the WTO ruled that countries can't simply impose national security-based tariffs for any reason at all, but instead can only impose them when there are unexpected war-related dangers requiring urgent action that involve interactions between sovereign states. This ruling significantly weakens the arguments that Trump had used to justify the tariffs. They have been imposed upon economies including Canada, Mexico, and the European Union, which clearly don't present "unexpected war-related dangers" (and Mattis in 2017 even said the tariffs weren't needed by the US military for any defense-related activities). Furthermore, US steel and aluminum manufacturers have lost business to private foreign companies, and the vast majority of nations affected do not provide state support to their steel and aluminum industries, so Trump's tariffs also don't involve direct interactions between sovereign states.

As NDN has long argued, Trump's tariffs instead represent an extraordinary abuse of Presidential power, and their imposition violates both US and international law. This ruling only reiterates that the tariffs do not serve a legitimate national security interest, and Congress must now act to rescind this latest violation of Presidential authority. You can read more about NDN's work challenging Trump's tariffs here, and find recent Congressional action towards reining in the tariffs here

Weekly Notes On The Economy is a weekly column that NDN writes on the most recent economic news, policy, and data.