WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump keeps finding ways to maintain a wall of tariffs around the American economy.On Friday, he rolled out new double-digit tariffs on imports from 60 U.S. trading partners, ostensibly for failing to do enough to prevent imports produced by forced labor. But the breadth of the levies — they cover 99% of U.S. imports — suggests another motivation: replacing worldwide tariffs that Trump imposed last year only to see them struck down by the Supreme Court in February.The forced-labor import taxes also happened to take effect at 12:01 a.m. Friday — precisely when time ran out on temporary global tariffs Trump had imposed after the Supreme Court setback.The levies were no surprise. They were virtually the same ones that U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer proposed in June. Still, they drew immediate fire from America’s trading partners and from U.S. critics who point out that tariffs are taxes paid by importers — or businesses buying goods from other countries — and are usually passed along to consumers with higher prices.
“This is a blatant attempt to revive Trump’s illegal global tariffs under a different name,” said Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee. “These latest tariffs will continue to keep inflation and prices high for Americans, and do nothing to help workers around the world.”The Liberty Justice Center, a libertarian advocacy group, has already filed a lawsuit against the new tariffs in a specialized trade court.
