The Trump administration announced Wednesday that it will launch a wave of tariff-related investigations into more than a dozen U.S. trading partners, the next phase in President Donald Trump’s wars of destruction around the world.
In a move that could lead to a new round of tariffs in the near future, the Office of the US Trade Representative is opening an official investigation into major trade partners including the European Union, Mexico and China – each ranked among the top five sources of US exports.
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.
“This investigation will focus on economies where there is evidence that appears to indicate excess structural and production capacity in various manufacturing sectors, such as excess, persistent trade surpluses or unused or unused capacity,” said US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer in a call with reporters on Wednesday.
“We expect that this investigation will uncover unfair trading practices,” Gerer added.
Greer said the US would also move to launch an investigation related to the importation of goods made by “forced laborers,” in a second announcement scheduled for later this week.
Goods manufactured using forced labor are already prohibited from entering the US under Section 307 of the Tariff Act of 1930. This ban was strengthened in 2021 when Congress passed the Uyghur Forced Labor Prohibition Act, which specifically targeted goods made in China’s Xinjiang region.
Currently, the United States has a flat 10% tariff on all trading partners that was imposed 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 when he used the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose emergency tariffs on many countries.
The current tariff was created under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, which allows the tariff to remain in place for 150 days, but not longer.
Gerer said his goal was for the investigation announced Wednesday to be completed by the end of that 150-day period.
“There are options for the president,” Greer said. “We are very focused on conducting a Section 301 investigation, and completing it quickly,” he said.
“I like to guide them to reach the end before [Section] 122 [tariff] it is running out of time,” he added.
Trading partners named in the new action on Wednesday are expected to strongly protest the Trump administration’s latest measures. Especially after many of them have reached draft trade agreements over the past year.
Mexico, for example, is part of the United States-Mexico-Canada trade agreement, which Trump negotiated during his first term in office. It was not immediately clear what impact Wednesday’s announcement would have on that deal.
The European Union, America’s biggest trading partner, reached an agreement last summer that was announced in Scotland.
But the future of that agreement is currently in doubt, after the EU suspended the final ratification process after the Supreme Court ruling and several other tense issues between the two alliances.
A senior member of the European Parliament said the Supreme Court’s decision – coupled with Trump’s new 10% duties – had created “tax chaos.”
“No one can make sense of it – only open questions and growing uncertainty for the EU and other US trade partners,” wrote Bernd Lange, head of the European Parliament’s trade committee, in a Feb. post. 22 in X.
The opening of the investigation in Switzerland may also be closely watched.
In January, at the World Economic Forum in the Swiss mountain town of Davos, Trump told attendees that he had imposed higher tariffs on the country than its neighbors because of his complaint.
“I, I think, the prime minister, I don’t think the president … called, a woman. And she was very repetitive,” Trump said in the speech.
Describing former Swiss president Karin Keller-Sutter, Trump said, “she kept saying the same thing over and over again, ‘we’re a small country.’
“And you just rubbed me the wrong way, I’ll be honest with you,” Trump said. He said after hanging up, he decided that the fee charged in Switzerland would be 39%.
“Then all hell broke loose, and I was visited by everyone,” he said, “Rolex came to see me.”
Following that visit, the price level was reduced to 15%.
