The Trump administration imposed a new wave of tariffs on more than 80 countries effective July 24, 2026, replacing a temporary 10% global levy that expired at 12:01 a.m. the same day. The tariffs, issued under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, set rates of 10% or 12.5% depending on whether each country has adopted and enforced forced-labor import prohibitions. The action covers 99.4 percent of U.S. imports, according to The Hill (The Hill).

Countries that committed to adopt and enforce forced-labor import prohibitions face a 10% tariff rate, while those that failed to adopt such prohibitions face 12.5%. Canada, the European Union (all 27 member states), India, Mexico, and the United Kingdom are subject to the 10% rate. Australia, Brazil, China, and Japan are subject to the 12.5% rate. The U.S. Trade Representative's office investigated 60 economies to determine whether each was effectively blocking goods produced with forced labor from entering the U.S. market (The Guardian; USTR).

The USTR formally initiated the Section 301 investigations on March 11, 2026, with the initiation notice published in the Federal Register on March 17 as document 2026-05214. The office issued its proposed determinations and proposed tariff actions on June 2, 2026, with the Federal Register publishing the Notice of Determinations and Request for Comments on June 5 as document 2026-11296. The Section 301 Committee held a three-day public hearing on July 7, 8, and 9 at the U.S. International Trade Commission's main hearing room at 500 E Street SW in Washington, D.C. The final Federal Register Notice announcing the actions was published on July 23, 2026 (Federal Register; Federal Register; USTR).

The July 23 action was published on whitehouse.gov as a presidential memorandum titled "Actions by the United States in the Investigations under Section 301," tagged with the topic "Forced Labor." The forced-labor duties that the final Section 301 tariffs largely tracked were originally proposed on June 1, 2026, per Reuters (Reuters; whitehouse.gov).

The legal architecture behind this action has shifted dramatically since the start of 2026. On February 20, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump (docket 24-1287) that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), the 1977 statute Trump had invoked for earlier tariff waves, does not authorize the President to impose tariffs. The majority opinion held that the power to tax during peacetime belongs solely to Congress (Supreme Court). Following that ruling, Trump issued a 150-day, 10% global tariff under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 as a stopgap. That temporary levy was scheduled to expire at 12:01 a.m. on July 24, 2026. The Section 301 tariffs were issued just before that expiration, ensuring continuity of the tariff regime under a different statutory authority (The Guardian).

Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 permits the President to impose temporary tariffs of up to 15% for a maximum of 150 days to address balance-of-payments deficits, but it cannot serve as a long-term trade instrument. Section 301, by contrast, allows the USTR to investigate and respond to unfair trade practices by foreign governments, and the statute has been the primary legal vehicle for U.S. trade enforcement actions for decades. The first-term Section 301 tariffs Trump imposed on China survived court challenges, establishing a precedent that the administration is now testing at a far broader scale (NPR).

The legal question is whether that precedent extends to a tariff regime covering nearly all U.S. imports and grounded in foreign labor practices rather than traditional trade violations like intellectual property theft or market access barriers. Alan Wolff, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and former deputy director-general of the WTO, stated that the new tariffs represent "another case of presidential overreach" and predicted that the Supreme Court would likely overturn them if challenged (The Guardian). An administration official countered that the Section 301 approach "encourages stronger labor rights enforcement abroad" (New York Post).

The economic stakes are substantial. The New York Federal Reserve estimated that 90% of the economic burden imposed by tariffs is passed on to U.S. consumers and businesses, meaning that a tariff covering 99.4% of imports functions, in practice, as a broad-based tax on imported goods across nearly every category of commerce (The Guardian; The Hill).

The broader context here is an administration systematically testing the boundaries of executive tariff authority across multiple statutes. The IEEPA route was foreclosed by the Supreme Court in February. Section 122 provided a 150-day bridge. Section 301 is now the third legal framework invoked in roughly six months. Each pivot has come just as the previous authority approached its legal or temporal limit, and each has drawn the tariff regime into a different statutory regime with distinct procedural requirements, scope constraints, and vulnerability to judicial review.

The Section 301 process has, at minimum, been more procedurally elaborate than the IEEPA tariffs it replaces. The USTR conducted formal investigations across 60 economies, issued proposed determinations, held three days of public hearings, and published Federal Register notices at each stage. Whether that procedural record will insulate the tariffs from a Learning Resources-style challenge remains the central open question. The first-term China Section 301 tariffs survived judicial review, but those targeted a single country over specific trade practices. The current action targets more than 80 countries simultaneously, conditioned on their domestic labor-law enforcement, and covers virtually the entirety of U.S. imports. A legal challenge appears likely given Wolff's assessment and the trajectory established by Learning Resources.