A fresh wave of American tariffs entered into force on 24 July, imposing additional duties of 10 per cent or 12.5 per cent on goods from some 60 trading partners. The move, announced by the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR), replaces a temporary 10 per cent surcharge that had been struck down by the Supreme Court in February. The new levies are grounded in Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 and justified by findings that many economies have failed to eliminate forced labour from their supply chains. Economies that have enacted or committed to import bans on forced-labour goods — including Canada, the European Union, India and the United Kingdom — face the lower 10 per cent rate, while China, Japan, South Korea, Switzerland and dozens of others are subject to 12.5 per cent.

Viewed from Buenos Aires, the outcome was received with guarded relief. Argentine officials noted that the country retained the minimum 10 per cent tariff and that a bilateral agreement signed in February, which eliminates duties on 1,675 Argentine products, remains in place. The presidential spokesman described the new scheme as an external shock but argued that Argentina’s stabilisation programme left it better equipped to cope. Analysts, however, warned that the change in legal basis places the bilateral accord in a legal limbo, as it contains no dispute-settlement mechanism. “If the US wants to revoke it, it revokes it,” said Federico Vaccarezza of the University of La Plata, adding that the uncertainty could deter American investment.

In Jakarta, the government acknowledged that the 10 per cent tariff was accompanied by US recognition of Indonesia’s commitment to tackling forced labour, and it announced plans to diversify export markets and streamline raw-material import rules to lower production costs. Economists cautioned that the 2.5 percentage-point gap with competitors such as Vietnam offered no meaningful advantage, because key rivals in textiles and garments — Bangladesh, Cambodia, India and Sri Lanka — were placed in the same 10 per cent bracket. “Pressure on trade will eventually turn into pressure on the labour market,” said Yusuf Rendy Manilet of the CORE Indonesia research institute, noting that labour-intensive sectors operate on thin margins and cannot easily pass on the extra cost. The EU, by contrast, saw the new rates as broadly consistent with the 15 per cent ceiling agreed in the Turnberry joint declaration. A Commission spokesman said the outcome provided “positive momentum” for further tariff exemptions and cooperation on critical raw materials, artificial intelligence and digital issues, while the chair of the European Parliament’s trade committee, Bernd Lange, spoke of a “slight sigh of relief”.

Trade analysts in Washington and elsewhere assess that the Section 301 basis makes the duties considerably harder to overturn in court than the emergency powers voided by the Supreme Court. USTR Jamieson Greer was said to have carefully followed procedural requirements, and past Section 301 actions have survived legal challenge. Yet the probes that underpinned the new tariffs were completed in just four months, far faster than the year-long investigation that preceded duties on China during Trump’s first term. The administration has also launched a separate inquiry into excess industrial capacity that could yield additional tariffs, and it has already used an untested 1930 statute to threaten 50 per cent levies on Canadian goods. No trading partner has so far announced retaliatory measures, but the dossier remains open: the USTR is conducting further investigations, and the bilateral agreements that many partners had hoped would stabilise trade are now seen as vulnerable to unilateral revision.