Washington, Feb 21: US President Donald Trump has signed a new 10 per cent tariff order on imports from around the world, hours after the country’s Supreme Court struck down his earlier sweeping import duties. The new tariffs will come under a law that restricts them to 150 days, and will take effect “almost immediately”.
Trump emphasised that with the new tariffs, an “adjustment process begins”.
“Those members of the Supreme Court who voted against our very acceptable and proper method of TARIFFS should be ashamed of themselves. Their decision was ridiculous but, now the adjustment process begins, and we will do everything possible to take in even more money than we were taking in before!” he wrote in a post on Truth Social.
“The new tariffs, totally tested and accepted as Law, are on their way,” the Republican leader added.
The US Supreme Court’s 6-3 ruling handed Trump a stinging loss on an issue crucial to his economic agenda. Furious about the defeat, Trump lashed out at the Supreme Court, saying that he was “ashamed” and called the ruling “deeply disappointing”.
“I am ashamed of certain Members of the Court for not having the Courage to do what is right for our Country. Certain Members of this Court, when, in fact, they’re just FOOLS and “LAPDOGS” for the RINOS and Radical Left Democrats and, not that this should have anything to do with it, very unpatriotic, and disloyal to the Constitution,” the Republican leader said.
According to Trump, he was “very modest” in his “ask” of other countries and businesses as he wanted to do “nothing that could sway the decision that has been rendered by the Court.” “I have very effectively utilised tariffs over the past year to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN. Our Stock Market has just recently broken the 50,000 mark on the DOW and, simultaneously, 7,000 on the S&P, two numbers that everybody thought, upon our Landslide Election Victory, could not be attained until the very end of my Administration – Four years! ” he said.
Trump further repeated his “solved wars” claim, saying he used tariffs to end “five of the eight wars” that he settled.
“Tariffs have given us Great National Security and, together with our Strong Border, reduced Fentanyl coming into our Country by 30%, when I use them as a penalty against Countries illegally sending this poison to us. All of those TARIFFS remain, but other alternatives will now be used to replace the ones that the Court incorrectly rejected,” he added.
Barely six months after he returned to the White House in January last year, Trump demolished the old global economic order and used US’ enormous economic power to punish countries that won’t agree to one-sided trade deals and extract huge concessions from the ones that do. On April 2, the US President announced “reciprocal” taxes of up to 50 per cent on imports from countries with which the US ran trade deficits and 10 per cent “baseline” taxes on almost all other countries. He invoked a 1977 law to declare the trade deficit a national emergency that justified his sweeping import taxes.
As the announcement triggered a backlash, he suspended the reciprocal tariffs for 90 days to give countries a chance to negotiate. Eventually, some of them caved in to Trump’s demands. The countries that did not cave in got hit harder with the tariffs.
