The Brief

The Trump administration opened Section 301 trade investigations into 16 economies — including China, the EU, Japan, India, and Mexico — on Tuesday, seeking to rebuild tariff authority after the Supreme Court’s 6-3 February ruling stripped the president of power to levy duties under IEEPA. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent predicted tariff rates would return to pre-ruling levels by August, calling the replacement authorities “more slow-moving, but more robust.”

The Report

U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer announced Section 301 investigations into China, the European Union, Japan, India, Mexico, South Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore, Switzerland, Norway, Indonesia, Malaysia, Cambodia, and Bangladesh — economies that collectively account for over $1.2 trillion in annual trade surpluses with the United States. The probes will examine structural excess manufacturing capacity, government subsidies, wage suppression, and persistent trade imbalances.

“The policy remains the same — the tools may change,” Greer said, adding that the investigations would target conclusions before July 24, when the administration’s temporary 15% tariff under Section 122 of the Trade Act expires.

The move follows the Supreme Court’s February 20 ruling in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump, in which a 6-3 majority held that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act does not authorise the president to impose tariffs. Chief Justice Roberts, writing for a coalition that spanned the court’s ideological divide, found that IEEPA “contains no reference to tariffs or duties” and that no prior president had interpreted the statute to confer such power. The ruling voided tariffs that had collected approximately $166 billion from more than 330,000 importers across 53 million entries — revenue the administration must now find alternative authority to replace.

Section 301 is the administration’s preferred long-term instrument. Unlike Section 122, which caps duties at 15% for 150 days, Section 301 carries no percentage ceiling, no fixed duration, and permits country-by-country rate-setting. The authority has survived more than 4,000 legal challenges, according to Bessent, and carries bipartisan precedent: Trump used it against China in 2018, and Biden maintained those tariffs and expanded them to Chinese electric vehicles, semiconductors, and solar products in 2024.

The timeline is compressed. A public comment docket opens March 17, with submissions due April 15 and hearings beginning May 5. Standard Section 301 investigations take up to 12 months, but Greer indicated the administration intends to reach conclusions within four. A separate Section 301 investigation targeting goods produced with forced labour — covering approximately 60 countries — is expected to launch April 12.

Trading partners responded cautiously. The European Commission said it would act “firmly and proportionately” against any breach of last summer’s Turnberry trade deal, which the EU paused ratifying after the Supreme Court ruling. South Korean Trade Minister Yeo Han-koo characterised the primary U.S. objective as restoring pre-ruling tariff levels. Bernd Lange, head of the European Parliament’s trade committee, offered the broader assessment: “No one can make sense of it anymore — only open questions and growing uncertainty.”

The administration’s legal position faces additional pressure. A coalition of 24 states, led by California and New York, has sued to block the temporary Section 122 tariffs on the grounds that no genuine balance-of-payments crisis exists to justify their invocation. Section 122 has never previously been used by any president. A separate private challenge argues the duties violate the nondelegation doctrine. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates that even at the maximum 15% rate, Section 122 tariffs replace only 77% of the revenue the IEEPA duties would have generated — a gap of $400 to $800 billion over the next decade.

The Angle

What is actually being reconstructed here is worth naming precisely. The Supreme Court did not strike down the administration’s trade policy. It struck down the mechanism — the legal shortcut that allowed tariffs to be imposed by executive declaration without the procedural overhead Congress built into the statutes it actually designed for the purpose. Section 301 is one of those statutes. It requires investigation, evidence, public comment, hearings, findings. It is, by design, the slow version of the thing the administration was doing quickly.

Greer’s formulation — “the policy remains the same, the tools may change” — is more revealing than it appears. The administration is not contesting the Court’s reading of the law. It is routing around it. The destination was never in question; only the speed of arrival. Bessent’s five-month timeline is an admission that the constraint was never legal authority — multiple statutes provide it — but patience. IEEPA was attractive because it let the executive set rates on any product, from any country, at any level, overnight. Section 301 lets you do the same thing, eventually, with paperwork.

The compressed investigation schedule tells the rest of the story. Twelve months is standard. Four months is what you get when the clock is political rather than analytical — when the investigation exists not to discover whether unfair practices exist but to document what the administration has already decided. The comment period, the hearings, the docket numbers — these are the procedural furniture of a conclusion that precedes its evidence. That does not make the conclusion wrong. China’s excess manufacturing capacity is well-documented. The EU’s trade surplus is a matter of public record. But the distinction between an investigation that might find something and a process designed to ratify a predetermined outcome is the distinction between a tool being used and a tool being performed.

The more interesting structural question is what happens to the 19 existing trade agreements negotiated under the implicit threat of IEEPA tariffs. South Korea committed $350 billion in U.S. investment. The EU pledged $550 billion in strategic sector commitments. Those deals were struck when the administration could credibly threaten immediate, uncapped duties. Section 301 tariffs carry the same theoretical ceiling but arrive on a timeline measured in months, not hours. Leverage that requires a year of procedural groundwork is a different kind of leverage than leverage that requires a signature. Every trading partner now knows the gun takes longer to load. What they do with that knowledge between now and August is the variable the administration cannot set by executive order.