President Donald Trump’s latest tariff offensive is already facing its first courtroom test, raising questions about whether his administration can use a decades-old trade law to rebuild the global duty structure that the Supreme Court dismantled earlier this year.
The Trump administration on Friday imposed broad tariffs on goods from more than 80 countries, citing their alleged failure to effectively combat forced labor practices. The duties, brought under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, apply to trade partners covering 99.4% of U.S. trade.
Within hours of the tariffs taking effect, two small businesses filed suit in the U.S. Court of International Trade, arguing the government is using Section 301 as a legal workaround to resurrect the same tariff regime the Supreme Court struck down in February.
A Familiar Pattern
The lawsuit, brought by the Liberty Justice Center — the same organization that successfully challenged Trump’s earlier tariffs — notes the timing of the new duties is hardly coincidental. The Section 301 tariffs took effect just as another batch of tariffs expired, duties that Trump had imposed under Section 122 immediately after the high court invalidated his use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to levy tariffs on nearly every trading partner.
The plaintiffs argue that while the new tariffs are ostensibly aimed at forced labor, they are “designed to preserve substantially the same broad tariff regime” that courts have already rejected. According to the lawsuit, Section 301 “is not a freestanding authorization to tax substantially all imports from substantially all trading partners at rates selected to replicate the invalidated IEEPA tariff regime.”
Expert Opinion Split
Trade experts are divided on the legal vulnerability of Trump’s latest move. Peter Harrell, a visiting scholar at Georgetown University Law Center’s Institute of International Economic Law, told CNBC that Trump is “using the statute in a fundamentally different way” than intended. Section 301 was “never intended for the president to just wholesale rewrite the tariff schedule” and impose permanent duties, he said, adding that the latest use could “for sure” be struck down in court.
Kimberly Clausing, a professor of tax law at UCLA School of Law and senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, was more direct in her assessment. “In my view, the Section 301 tariffs are clearly unlawful,” she said by email, arguing that the administration’s forced labor focus “is a mere pretext for recreating the IEEPA tariff regime.” She also noted there is “no evidence linking this sort of trade measure to the supposed policy goal” of addressing forced labor.
Alan Wolff, another Peterson Institute senior fellow, wrote in a blog post that the Supreme Court would likely strike down the forced-labor tariffs, noting that Section 301 requires finding that a country’s acts or policies burden U.S. commerce — “a requirement [that] is not clearly satisfied for the 60 targeted countries.”
Defense of the Tariffs
Not all legal observers are convinced the tariffs will fall. Greta Peisch, former general counsel for the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative and now a partner at Wiley Rein, said the Trump administration has followed the legal procedures required under Section 301. The statute’s language “gives a lot of flexibility” to the government, she told CNBC. “I think it’s a pretty difficult standard to have to argue against.”
Andrew Siciliano, global and U.S. head of trade and customs at KPMG, noted that Section 301’s extensive history may make these tariffs “harder to unwind.” He advised companies to “plan around the tariffs that exist today rather than assume they will be quickly reversed or modified.”
The Trump administration has defended the timing and substance of the tariffs. A senior administration official said addressing forced labor “is something that President Trump has been focused on … for many years,” adding that the timing was chosen “really to avoid complexity.”
Trump appears to view Section 301 as a key vehicle for expanding his tariff agenda. On Friday, he announced the U.S. would “immediately” start a 301 investigation into the European Union in retaliation for fines on U.S. tech companies, marking the latest in a series of recent tariff actions.
Source: www.cnbc.com — https://www.cnbc.com/2026/07/24/trump-tariffs-lawsuit-301-ieepa.html
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