Donald Trump has doubled down on tariffs charged on lumber, cabinets, vanities and upholstered furniture entering the United States, calling US Supreme Court judges who ruled against his liberation tariffs “fools and lapdogs” before vowing to impose a 10% global tariff “over and above our normal tariffs already being charged.”
It comes after the President addressed the media, following the US Supreme Court’s bombshell ruling against Trump’s tariffs — a 6-3 decision upholding a lower court’s finding that Trump had exceeded his authority by imposing tariffs under a law meant for national emergencies, meaning the United States must now refund more than US $100 billion in tariffs collected.
“Effective immediately, all national security tariffs under Section 232, and existing Section 301 tariffs — they’re existing, they’re there — remain in place, fully in place, and in full force and effect,” Trump said. “Today, I will sign an order to impose a 10 per cent global tariff under Section 122, over and above our normal tariffs already being charged. And we’re also initiating several Section 301 and other investigations to protect our country from unfair trading practices of other countries and companies.”
The new tariffs come after the President, in October, signed into effect Section 232 tariffs, not impacted by the Supreme Court ruling, which saw a 10% tariff rate apply to global lumber (from October 14) and a 25% tariff on cabinets, vanities and upholstered furniture (rising to 30% to 50% from January 1) unless trading countries could strike a deal with US Secretary Howard Lutnick.
At the time, Trump said timber imports are weakening the U.S. economy, resulting in persistent threats to the closure of wood mills, disruptions to wood product supply chains, and a decline in the utilisation of the U.S. domestic wood industry:
“Because of the state of the United States wood industry, the United States may be unable to meet demands for wood products that are crucial to the national defence and critical infrastructure,” according to Trump’s statement, adding that lumber is used for “building infrastructure for operational testing, housing and storage for personnel and materiel, transporting munitions, as an ingredient in munitions, and as a component in missile-defense systems and thermal-protection systems for nuclear-reentry vehicles.”
Why the US Supreme Court struck down global tariffs
In support of the 6-3 decision, the US Supreme Court issued a 170-page ruling finding that Trump’s use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 to unilaterally impose tariffs on other countries was unconstitutional.
Writing in the Conversation today, Kent Jones, Professor Emeritus, Economics at Babson College, said most of the tariffs Trump has imposed used the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to provide legal justification. “While the law allows the president to respond to economic emergencies with measures such as embargoes and asset seizures, it does not specifically authorise the use of tariffs imposed unilaterally,” Professor Jones said.
“This was a major point made in the Supreme Court decision. In every other statute available to the president to use tariffs, there is specific language stating the way in which tariffs can be imposed, language that is absent in the International Emergency Economic Powers Act statute.”
“The majority decision, in which the court’s liberal justices were joined by three of its conservatives, determined that the president overreached his powers to set tariffs, based on Article 1, Section 8, of the U.S Constitution. Any delegation of tariff-making powers in an emergency to the president must be consistent with this provision.”
“It is also noteworthy that Trump openly declared that one of the benefits of the tariffs was how much revenue they bring in. But the majority decision noted that this represented an unauthorised presidential power to tax, which is also governed by the Article 1, Section 8, provision that assigns this power exclusively to Congress.”
Please note: Wood Central will have additional coverage in the coming days on the impact of the US Supreme Court decision, including its impact on the USMCA, softwood lumber traded between the United States and Canada, and shipments of plywood and furniture from Vietnam, China, Malaysia, and Indonesia.
