Current News

/

ArcaMax

Trump says he will increase global tariffs to 15% from 10%

Wendy Benjaminson, María Paula Mijares Torres, Bloomberg News on

Published in News & Features

President Donald Trump said he will increase the global 10% tariff he announced one day ago to 15% as he lashed out at the U.S. Supreme Court over its ruling that his mechanism for applying tariffs was illegal.

“I, as President of the United States of America, will be, effective immediately, raising the 10% Worldwide Tariff on Countries, many of which have been ‘ripping’ the U.S. off for decades, without retribution (until I came along!), to the fully allowed, and legally tested, 15% level,” Trump said in a social media post on Saturday.

Hours after the court’s ruling on Friday, Trump imposed a 10% global tariff on foreign goods, moving to preserve his trade agenda.

Trump is applying the new baseline tariff under Section 122 of the 1974 Trade Act, which allows the president to impose tariffs for 150 days without congressional approval. Securing that approval could prove challenging, as Democrats and some Republicans have opposed elements of his trade policy.

The initial 10% tariffs Trump announced on Friday were scheduled to go into effect on Feb. 24 at 12:01 a.m. ET, according to a White House fact sheet. He is set to deliver the State of the Union address to Congress that evening in Washington. Trump’s post on Saturday didn’t go into details on timing on the increased tariffs.

The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 Friday that Trump had acted unlawfully in using a longstanding federal emergency powers statute to justify his “reciprocal” tariffs. Last April, he relied on the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to levy duties ranging from 10% to 50% on dozens of U.S. trading partners.

The White House and U.S. Trade Representative’s office didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

Trump said Friday he would maintain a flat 10% tariff while keeping in place existing duties imposed under Sections 301 and 232, and ordered the U.S. trade representative to launch new Section 301 investigations on an accelerated timeline.

 

Those probes require country-specific inquiries and findings of trade violations before tariffs can be imposed, and could eventually replace the baseline rate. He is also weighing tariffs of 15% to 30% on foreign cars, while preserving exemptions for goods and certain agricultural products under a trade agreement among the U.S., Mexico and Canada.

“We expect these investigations to cover most major trading partners and to address areas of concern such as industrial excess capacity, forced labor, pharmaceutical pricing practices, discrimination against U.S. technology companies and digital goods and services, digital services taxes, ocean pollution and practices related to the trade in seafood, rice, and other products,” U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said in a statement Friday.

The Supreme Court decision raises fresh questions about revenue that already has been collected on tariffs. More than 1,500 companies had filed tariff lawsuits in trade court in preparation for the ruling, according to a Bloomberg analysis.

The court ruling didn’t address whether importers are entitled to refunds, leaving the matter to lower courts — a potential exposure of up to $170 billion, or more than half the revenue raised by Trump’s tariffs. Trump criticized the justices for not offering guidance, but Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said tariff revenue is expected to remain “virtually unchanged” in 2026 despite the ruling.

———

(With assistance from Catherine Lucey.)


©2026 Bloomberg L.P. Visit bloomberg.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

 

Comments

blog comments powered by Disqus