Trump launches next phase of trade war with new investigations

The Trump administration announced Wednesday it would launch a wave of tariff-related investigations into more than a dozen U.S. trading partners, the next phase of President Donald Trump’s sweeping global trade wars.

In a process that is expected to result in another round of tariffs in the near future, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative is opening formal investigations into major trading partners, including the European Union, Mexico and China, each of which ranks among the top five sources of U.S. imports.

Singapore, Switzerland, Norway, Indonesia, Malaysia, Cambodia, Thailand, Korea, Vietnam, Taiwan, Bangladesh, Japan and India will also be targets of investigations under the trade law known as Section 301.

“These investigations will focus on economies where we have evidence that appear to have structurally excess capacity and production in various manufacturing sectors, such as through larger and persistent trade surpluses or underutilized or unused capacity,” U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said on a call with reporters Wednesday.

“We hope this investigation will reveal various unfair trade practices,” Greer added.

Greer said the United States would also launch an investigation into the importation of goods made with “forced labor,” in a second announcement expected later this week.

Goods produced by forced labor are already prohibited from importing into the United States under Section 307 of the Tariff Act of 1930. This ban was strengthened in 2021 when Congress passed the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which specifically targeted products made in China’s Xinjiang region.

Currently, the United States imposes blanket 10% tariffs on all its trading partners after the Supreme Court struck down many of President Donald Trump’s country-specific tariffs in late February.

The court found that Trump exceeded his presidential authority by using the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose rapid tariffs on numerous countries.

The current tariff was enacted under Section 122 of the Commerce Act of 1974, which allows the tariff to remain in effect for 150 days, but not more.

Greer said his goal is for the investigations announced Wednesday to be completed before the end of the 150-day period.

“There are potential options for the president,” Greer said. “We are much more focused on Section 301 investigations and concluding them as quickly as possible,” he said.

“I would like to target them to reach a conclusion before the [Section] 122 [tariff] expires,” he added.

The trading partners named in Wednesday’s new action are expected to fiercely protest the Trump administration’s latest moves. Especially after many of them concluded framework trade agreements over the past year.

Mexico, for example, is a party to the United States-Mexico-Canada trade agreement, which Trump negotiated during his first term. It was not immediately clear what impact Wednesday’s announcement would have on that deal.

The European Union, the United States’ largest trading partner, struck a deal last summer that was announced in Scotland.

But the future of the deal is currently uncertain, after the EU paused the final ratification process following the Supreme Court ruling and several other tense issues between the two allies.

A senior member of the European Parliament said the Supreme Court’s ruling – coupled with Trump’s new 10% tariffs – had created “pure tariff chaos”.

“No one can understand this anymore – only open questions and growing uncertainty for the EU and other US trading partners,” wrote Bernd Lange, chairman of the European Parliament’s trade committee, on February 22 on X.

The opening of an investigation in Switzerland will also likely draw scrutiny.

In January, at the World Economic Forum in the Swiss mountain village of Davos, Trump told attendees that he had imposed significantly higher tariffs on the country than his neighbors because of a personal grievance.

“I guess the prime minister, I don’t think the president… called, a woman. And she was very repetitive,” Trump said in a speech.

Describing Karin Keller-Sutter, then president of Switzerland, Trump said she “kept saying the same thing, ‘we’re a small country’.”

“And she just bullied me, I’ll be honest with you,” Trump said. He said that after he hung up, he decided that the tariffs on Switzerland would be 39%.

“Then all hell really broke loose and everyone visited me,” he said. “Rolex came to see me.”

Following these visits, the duty rate was lowered to 15%.