Trump launches the next phase of his trade war with new investigations of key partners

 Trump launches the next phase of his trade war with new investigations of key partners

The Trump administration announced Wednesday that it will launch a wave of tariff-related investigations into more than a dozen U.S. trade partners, the next phase in President Donald Trump's sweeping global trade wars.

In a process that is likely to result in a fresh round of tariffs in the near future, the Office of U.S. Trade Representative is opening the formal probes into major trade partners that include the European Union, Mexico and China — each of which ranks among the top five sources of U.S. imports.L 

Singapore, Switzerland, Norway, Indonesia, Malaysia, Cambodia, Thailand, Korea, Vietnam, Taiwan, Bangladesh, Japan and India will also be the targets of investigations under the trade statute known as Section 301.

“These investigations will focus on economies that we have evidence appear to exhibit structural excess capacity and production in various manufacturing sectors, such as through larger, persistent trade surpluses or underutilized or unused capacity,” said U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer on a call with reporters Wednesday.

“We expect that this investigation will uncover a variety of unfair trading practices,” Greer added.

Greer said the U.S. would also be moving to launch an investigation related to the import of goods made with “forced labor,” in a second announcement set for later this week.

Goods produced using forced labor are already banned from U.S. import under Section 307 of the Tariff Act of 1930. This ban was strengthened in 2021 when Congress passed the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which specifically targeted goods made in the Xinjiang region of China.

Currently, the United States has a blanket 10% tariff in place on all trading partners that was imposed after the Supreme Court struck down many of President Donald Trump’s country-specific tariffs in late February.

The court found that Trump exceeded his presidential authority when he used the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose rapid-fire tariffs on scores of countries.

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