On July 20, 2026, President Trump signed four proclamations, three targeting Canada and a fourth on aluminum. On July 23, 2026, his trade office finalized tariffs on 60 more countries over forced labor. All of it replaces a tool the Supreme Court struck down five months earlier: tariffs imposed by declaring a national emergency, covering nearly every country the U.S. trades with. Losing that tool didn’t end the tariffs; it sent the administration to older, narrower laws that do the job more slowly, but on firmer legal ground.

Why tariffs at all? The administration’s own answer, laid out by U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, is that the U.S. ran “the highest trade deficit in the history of the world,” hollowing out domestic manufacturing and leaving the country dependent on rivals for critical supply chains. “We require a generational project to re-industrialize America,” Greer wrote, “and time is short.” In simpler terms: the administration wants the manufacturing that moved overseas over the last several decades to come back to the U.S., and it’s using tariffs to force that shift. That’s the goal behind both parties’ tariffs for most of the last decade. What changed this month isn’t the goal, it’s which law gets there, how fast, and how exposed to another lawsuit.

This started in 2018, during President Trump’s first term. That March, his administration used Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, which lets a president restrict imports that threaten national security, to tariff steel (25%) and aluminum (10%). Canada retaliated with C$16.6 billion in surtaxes that summer, lifted in 2019 once the U.S., Canada, and Mexico signed the USMCA to replace NAFTA. Separately, a Section 301 investigation into Chinese intellectual property (IP) theft, patents and trade secrets, led to tariffs on roughly $300 billion of Chinese goods by 2020.

President Biden kept nearly all of it. A mandatory four-year review found China “had changed some specific unfair measures,” but that tech-transfer practices had “persisted, and in some cases become more aggressive.” USTR said the tariffs had “reduced” U.S. businesses’ exposure to those practices, and added $18 billion in 2024 on EVs, semiconductors, and solar. On steel and aluminum, though, Biden traded blanket tariffs for negotiated tariff-rate quotas, duty-free volume up to a cap, tariffs above it, with the EU, UK, Japan, and eventually others including Australia. That wasn’t abandoning tariffs; it was keeping allies inside the tent while still capping import volume.

President Trump’s 2025 team read those same quotas as the problem, not a compromise. A February 2025 fact sheet called the exemptions “loopholes… exploited by China and others with excess steel and aluminum capacity,” and reinstated flat 25% tariffs on everyone. Then, citing fentanyl and immigration, it invoked the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), a 1977 sanctions law never before used for tariffs, to tariff Canadian, Mexican, and Chinese goods. On April 2, 2025, it used IEEPA again for “Liberation Day”: a 10% baseline tariff on nearly every country, plus higher country rates. Canada hit back with its own 25% tariff on non-USMCA-compliant U.S. vehicles. Two importers, a toy company (Learning Resources) and a wine importer (V.O.S. Selections), sued, arguing IEEPA doesn’t let a president impose tariffs at all. Their case reached the Supreme Court within the year.

On February 20, 2026, the Supreme Court agreed with them. Learning Resources v. Trump held IEEPA doesn’t authorize tariffs, full stop. But the ruling said nothing about Section 232, 301, or the 1930 Section 338, calling those “hypothetical cases not before us.” The Court closed one specific door. Every ordinary trade statute stayed open.

As a stopgap, the administration used Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, a tool Congress built in the 1970s (after President Nixon’s unilateral 1971 import surcharge) specifically so presidents wouldn’t need vague emergency powers again. It required only a balance-of-payments finding, capped the tariff at 15% for 150 days, and had a built-in expiration, the opposite of IEEPA’s open-ended emergency language. President Trump invoked it, for the first time ever, at 10% starting February 24, 2026. It expired July 24, 2026, the same day the replacements below took over.

Canada. Three proclamations impose 50% duties on Canadian goods. All three rely on Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930, which lets a president act on a simple finding, no formal investigation required, that a country is discriminating against U.S. commerce, which is why these tariffs moved fast and likely why the law sat unused for roughly 90 years. Each proclamation targets a different Canadian practice, tariffs on U.S. cars, alcohol bans, thin dairy quotas, but the duty actually lands on a broad basket of Canadian goods (cement, apparel, furniture, even hockey equipment) rather than the disputed products themselves; the vehicles at the center of the auto fight are handled separately, under Section 232. All take effect August 19, 2026.

Aluminum. The fourth proclamation isn’t retaliation at all. It uses Section 232, which requires a Commerce Department investigation and national-security finding, to offer companies a discount, 25% instead of the standing 50% rate, on a matching volume of imported primary aluminum, if they commit to building or expanding U.S. smelting capacity. The U.S. imports 60% of the aluminum it uses, and 56% of that comes from Canada, according to U.S. Geological Survey data, while domestic primary smelters have been idling or shutting down for years. This is an attempt to buy back capacity tariffs alone haven’t restored, and it has nothing to do with the IEEPA ruling or Canada’s dispute.

60 countries. On July 23, USTR finalized Section 301 tariffs (10-12.5%) on the top 60 trading partners, covering 99.4% of imports, for failing to police forced labor. Section 301 requires USTR to investigate a specific unfair practice, take public comments, and calibrate its response to match that practice, a proportionality requirement the scope of this action is now being tested against. The investigation itself ran about four months, faster than the original 2017-18 China probe, which took eleven.

Canada. The administration’s case rests on the discrimination findings above, plus the reshoring and leverage goals described earlier: pushing Canada to change practices that disadvantage American-made cars, alcohol, and dairy. Prime Minister Mark Carney called the tariffs a breach of USMCA and said Canada has offered “detailed and comprehensive proposals” to modernize it. That matters because on July 1, 2026, the U.S. declined to confirm USMCA’s 16-year renewal that Canada and Mexico wanted, triggering mandatory annual reviews toward a 2036 expiration, meaning both fights are live at once, with U.S. leverage in each. In Congress, three bills would rein in this authority: Rep. Schneider’s H.R. 2464 (repeal Section 338), the bipartisan Grassley-Cantwell Trade Review Act (a 60-day congressional vote requirement), and Sen. Wyden’s July 22, 2026 Congressional Trade Powers Reform Act, which names this dispute directly.

Forced labor. USTR says the U.S. is “the only country” that enforces a forced-labor import ban, and this pushes 60 partners to match it. Nobody disputes that goal; ending forced labor in supply chains isn’t contested. The pushback is entirely legal, about scope. Alan Wm. Wolff of the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE, a nonpartisan economic think tank) and Georgetown’s Peter Harrell both argue a tariff covering 99.4% of imports, without country-specific findings, doesn’t meet Section 301’s “appropriate action” standard and could trigger the Supreme Court’s “major questions” doctrine, which limits agencies claiming sweeping new power from an old statute.

Two numbers anchor this. First: Fed research from a survey of firms that actually pay tariffs found roughly 90% of the cost lands on U.S. companies and consumers, who mostly raise prices rather than eat the cost. The administration doesn’t dispute this; it calls it the point: manufacturers can avoid the cost entirely by building here instead of importing, the same case Greer made above. Second: investment pledges from countries seeking tariff relief, $600 billion from the EU alone. The White House puts the total at $9.6 trillion; President Trump has cited $17-18 trillion. PIIE’s independent count is closer to $5 trillion, and PIIE economist Adnan Mazarei says the pledges were made “under duress” and are largely non-binding. Some of it is real, though: Taiwan’s TSMC, part of a $265 billion U.S. commitment announced this July, has one Arizona plant running profitably and a third under construction.

There’s also a federal revenue number. Customs collections are up 51% for the fiscal year, but that’s the gross figure. After the Court’s ruling, $70 billion went out in refunds in May and June alone, and in June specifically, refunds ($50 billion) outpaced new collections ($24 billion), a $26 billion net loss for the month. Even so, the administration calls the 51% figure the tariffs working as designed: imports costing more.

The Canada tariffs take effect August 19, 2026, inside the same window as the USMCA reviews. The forced-labor tariffs have no set start date beyond finalized rates, and given the scope argument above, a court challenge is likely before they’re fully in effect.

Congress tried to stop a version of this. In February 2026, the House voted 219-211, following an earlier Senate vote, to terminate the Canada tariff emergency under IEEPA, a fast-track option only for declared emergencies. President Trump has vowed to veto it, and neither chamber has the votes to override, the ceiling on Congress’s power even on a bipartisan vote. Section 232, 301, 338, and 122 don’t involve declaring an emergency, so that fast-track tool doesn’t apply to them. Stopping those requires the three reform bills already covered, which have to clear a filibuster or a veto instead of a privileged vote, and none has moved past introduction. That’s not Congress failing to notice the problem. It’s a majority choosing not to vote on any of the three, a steeper gridlock than a bill losing on the floor.

If a middle ground exists among those three, it’s Grassley-Cantwell. Unlike Schneider’s and Wyden’s bills, which repeal specific tariff authorities, Grassley-Cantwell leaves the president’s power intact but requires Congress to approve it within 60 days or let it expire, a check rather than a repeal, and the only one of the three with sponsors from both parties, suggesting the real disagreement isn’t whether tariffs should exist, most lawmakers agree the grievances with China and Canada are real, but whether one person should impose them indefinitely without a vote.

We hold government to the record. Hold us to it too, hit reply with feedback or things we missed.