Hours after the Supreme Court struck down his emergency tariffs in a 6, 3 ruling, President Trump reached for a different shelf in the trade-law arsenal. A proclamation issued Friday evening invoked Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 to impose an import surcharge on most goods entering the United States, initially set at ten percent, then raised the next day to fifteen percent, the maximum the statute allows.
The surcharge takes effect February 24. It expires July 24, 150 days later, unless Congress acts to extend it.
The message was immediate and unmistakable: the trade agenda isn't pausing for a court opinion.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority, finding that Trump exceeded his authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act in imposing reciprocal tariffs on nearly all U.S. trading partners. Those IEEPA-based tariffs, some of which reached fifty percent, had been the backbone of the "Liberation Day" executive order issued April 2, 2025.
But the ruling was narrow in scope. It addressed IEEPA. It did not touch Section 232 national-security duties. It did not foreclose other statutory authorities. And it left Section 122, a provision that has never previously been used by a president, sitting untouched on the books.
Trump moved into that gap before the ink was dry.
Section 122 authorizes the president to impose temporary import surcharges when the country faces what the statute calls:
"fundamental international payments problems"
that are:
"large and serious"
The proclamation cited the size and persistence of the U.S. trade deficit, a widening current-account deficit, and a deteriorating net international investment position as evidence that such problems exist. Whether courts will view those conditions as meeting the statutory threshold is a question that will almost certainly be litigated, but the 150-day clock starts ticking regardless.
The order excludes articles already subject to Section 232 tariffs, specifying that the surcharge is not to apply "in addition" to those duties. That's a deliberate structural choice, the proclamation's architecture appears designed to match the statute's limits rather than invite the same overreach argument that sank the IEEPA tariffs.
The exemption list is long, and much of it carries over from the prior tariff regime. Among the categories excluded:
The exemptions tell you something about the strategy. Energy, medicine, and goods Americans can't source domestically stay untouched. The surcharge lands on the trade flows where leverage exists.
The Tax Foundation estimates the surcharge applies to roughly $1.2 trillion in annual imports, about 34 percent of total U.S. goods imports. At fifteen percent for 150 days, that translates to approximately $43 billion in direct tariff payments and roughly $33 billion in net revenue after offsets. At the initial ten percent rate, the figures would have been about $33 billion direct and $25 billion net.
Yale's Budget Lab offers a useful before-and-after snapshot of effective tariff rates:
The surcharge doesn't fully restore the pre-ruling tariff wall. The Tax Foundation estimates the applied tariff rate under the IEEPA regime was about 13.8 percent; with the fifteen percent surcharge, it lands at about 12.1 percent. After the surcharge expires, the rate drops to about 6.7 percent.
For the full year of 2026, the Tax Foundation projects an effective tariff rate of about 6.0 percent with 150 days of the fifteen percent surcharge, compared to roughly 10 percent under the pre-ruling regime.
In other words, the surcharge is a bridge, not a fortress. It buys time.
Trump signaled on social media that the administration is conducting a:
"thorough, detailed, and complete review"
of its tariff authorities, and that:
"the Trump Administration will determine and issue the new and legally permissible Tariffs"
over:
"the next short number of months."
The 150-day window is the operative constraint. July 24 is the deadline. Without congressional action to extend it, the surcharge vanishes and the effective tariff rate falls to roughly 6.7 percent, well below where the administration wants it. That creates a forcing function: either the White House identifies durable legal authority for a new tariff structure, or Congress steps in.
There's also the question of refunds. The Supreme Court's ruling that IEEPA tariffs were unauthorized raises the prospect of refunds to importers who paid those duties. The timing and mechanics of any such process remain uncertain, but the fiscal and legal implications are real.
The speed of this response matters more than the rate. A president who waited weeks to regroup would have signaled that the Court had won a policy argument. Instead, Trump treated the ruling as a procedural obstacle, one statute was blocked, so he pivoted to another. The trade deficit didn't shrink because six justices disagreed with the legal vehicle.
Section 122 has never been deployed before. That means there's no body of case law defining its boundaries, no precedent limiting its application. It's untested terrain, and the administration is planting a flag on it while simultaneously building whatever comes after July 24.
Critics will call it an escalation. But the underlying premise, that persistent, structural trade imbalances justify executive action, hasn't been refuted by the Court. Roberts ruled on the statute, not the policy. The question was never whether the trade deficit is real. It was whether IEEPA was the right tool.
Trump found another one. The clock is running.
