Trump’s Tariffs Are Getting Dragged Into Court Again — And This Time the Legal Trap Is One He Built Himself
Donald Trump’s trade war has a new front, and this one is not being fought in a port or a factory floor. It is being fought in a courtroom. The Financial Times reports that Trump’s latest tariff plans are facing protracted legal challenges after the United States Supreme Court struck down his previous duties last month, ruling that the president could not use emergency powers to impose sweeping tariffs on trading partners.
The administration moved fast after that ruling. It immediately reimposed tariffs of 10 percent on US trading partners by invoking Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, a decades-old piece of legislation that allows the president to impose tariffs of up to 15 percent for 150 days to address what the law describes as large and serious balance of payments deficits. Two lawsuits have already been filed against those levies at the Court of International Trade, with hearing dates set for next month.
The legal argument being made against the administration is pointed. Lawyers in one of the cases contend that Trump has once again exercised tariff authority that he does not have, involving a statute that does not authorise the tariffs he has imposed, in a move that upends the constitutional order. The White House has not publicly responded to that framing.
Even if the tariffs survive their immediate legal challenge, the reliance on Section 122 is creating problems that are structural rather than temporary. The statute is specific about how tariffs applied under it must work: one rate across all countries, applied on a non-discriminatory basis, with limited exceptions for particular products. That is a significant constraint for an administration that has built its trade strategy around applying differentiated pressure to different countries.
Trump initially threatened to impose the full 15 percent rate on countries after the Supreme Court ruling, but European allies pushed back and the UK and EU had already struck deals for preferential lower tariff rates. Both would be worse off under a blanket 15 percent tariff than under their existing negotiated arrangements. Legal experts quoted in the FT report say that if Trump attempts to set different rates for different countries under Section 122, the courts would likely rule against those tariffs as well, compounding the administration’s legal exposure rather than resolving it.
Peter Harrell, a former senior economic official in the Biden administration, told the FT that the statute is quite clear that it should be applied on a non-discriminatory basis. Moving rates around, or having differential rates by country, would invite exactly the kind of additional legal problems the administration is trying to avoid.
Section 122 tariffs expire after 150 days unless Congress approves an extension. That clock is now running, and Trump’s trade team is in a race to construct a more durable legal foundation before it runs out. The US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer has launched investigations into 60 trading partners over practices around forced labour and excess manufacturing capacity under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974. Section 301 investigations, if completed, would grant Trump the authority to impose higher, country-specific tariffs on firmer legal ground.
The problem is timing. Section 301 investigations normally take six to eight months to complete. Greer has publicly said he hopes to hand Trump those options before the Section 122 tariffs expire, which would represent an unusually compressed timeline for a process that has historically been methodical and evidence-heavy.
Everett Eissenstat, a former Trump trade official now at Squire Patton Boggs, told the FT that completing those investigations on that timeline would be fast, though he added that the process could make Trump’s trade deals with other countries fairly durable if successfully executed.
There is also a question around whether Trump can simply extend the Section 122 tariffs beyond 150 days. The statute says that extending beyond that period requires Congressional approval, which is not guaranteed even in a Republican-controlled Congress given the economic anxiety that sweeping tariffs are generating domestically. Kathleen Claussen, a professor of law at Georgetown University, told the FT that Trump could attempt to exploit a legal grey area around whether a president can reapply the statute after one usage, though she acknowledged doing so would violate the spirit of the law.
India has been one of the trading partners caught in the middle of every phase of Trump’s tariff escalation. The 10 percent blanket tariff currently in effect under Section 122 applies to Indian exports to the United States across a wide range of categories. If the administration successfully completes its Section 301 investigations and moves to country-specific higher tariffs, India faces the prospect of a more targeted and potentially higher duty structure than the current blanket rate.
The legal uncertainty itself creates a problem that is separate from whatever the eventual tariff rate turns out to be. Indian exporters, particularly in textiles, pharmaceuticals, engineering goods, and IT services, are operating in an environment where the rules of access to the US market are being rewritten repeatedly, challenged in court, and potentially rewritten again within a six to eight month window. That uncertainty has a direct cost in terms of investment planning, contract pricing, and supply chain decisions that does not disappear even if the tariffs themselves are eventually struck down.
The era of stable, predictable US trade policy appears to be over regardless of how the current court battles resolve. What Trump has demonstrated, across both the emergency powers route now ruled illegal and the Section 122 route now under challenge, is a consistent willingness to push the boundaries of executive authority on trade as far as the courts will allow, and then look for the next statute when the boundary is enforced. For India and every other trading partner, that is not a legal problem. It is a strategic one.
Disclaimer: This article is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute financial or investment advice. Trade policy information is sourced from publicly available reporting as of March 23, 2026.