New York: Donald Trump is reportedly considering a national economic emergency to provide legal justification for universal tariffs on allies and adversaries. According to a CNN report, the move is aimed at resetting the global balance of trade in his second term.
According to the CNN report, the declaration would allow Trump to construct a new tariff program by using the International Economic Emergency Powers Act, known as “IEEPA”.
In 2019, Trump used IEEPA to threaten a 5 percent tariff on all Mexican imports that would rise to 25 percent if Mexico declined to take action to reduce the number of undocumented immigrants crossing the border with the US, as per the report.
The Trump transition team did not comment on the report. Trump’s team is still exploring other legal avenues to buttress the tariffs that Trump pitched on the campaign trail.
Trump has warned several countries about upcoming potential tariffs, as he gears up for his ‘America First’ policy to take a concrete shape. His proposals include a new 20 percent “universal” tariff on all foreign imports and hiking tariffs on China to 60 percent.
The US President-elect Trump said he would impose a 25 percent tariff on imports from Canada and Mexico until they clamped down on drugs, particularly fentanyl, and migrants crossing the border.
