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Ilya Somin /

Is Trump’s New Tariff Lever IEEPA 2.0?

The administration’s latest import tax regime is similar to the illegal levies the Supreme Court struck down.
Aerial view of a shipping container terminal with colorful stacked cargo containers organized in rows along paved lanes at a port facility.
An aerial view of shipping containers at the Port of Baltimore in Baltimore, Maryland, on August 7, 2025. (Photo by Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images)

President Donald Trump recently used Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 to impose massive new tariffs on 60 U.S. trading partners, including the European Union, Canada, Australia, Japan, South Korea, and more. Imports from 41 trading partners will now face 12.5 percent tariffs, and the others will be subject to 10 percent levies.

Ilya Somin is a visiting professor of law at the University of Virginia, professor of law at George Mason University, the B. Kenneth Simon Chair in Constitutional Studies at the Cato Institute, and author of Free to Move: Foot Voting, Migration and Political Freedom. Together with the Liberty Justice Center and others, he was co-counsel in VOS Selections v. Trump, one of the tariff cases decided by the Supreme Court.

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