Trump dusts off obscure legal authority for new tariffs
Marketplace All-in-One
Marketplace
4.5 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 23 February 2026
⏱️ 7 minutes
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Summary
Following Friday’s Supreme Court decision striking down a number of President Trump’s tariffs, the administration is moving to impose a global 15% tariff, with some exceptions for countries like Canada and Mexico. The tariffs, which are being levied temporarily under a statutory authority known as Section 122, will bring the average effective tariff rate to 13.7%, according to the Yale Budget Lab. Also on the program: Spain’s new plan to bolster its workforce by granting legal status to migrants living in the country illegally.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | There is fresh uncertainty after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the lion share of Trump administration tariffs. |
| 0:08.7 | I'm David Brancaccio in Los Angeles. President Trump is moving to impose a 15% global tariff now, |
| 0:14.8 | claiming legal authority that grants him power to do so for 150 days. And there are other tariff tools as well. Marketplace's Nova Safo reports. |
| 0:23.4 | The latest tariffs keep higher levies mostly in place for now, despite the Supreme Court's ruling. |
| 0:28.5 | The Yale budget lapse says the effective rate on the whole now averages 13.7 percent down from 16%. |
| 0:35.5 | The new tariffs are under a statutory authority known as Section 122, |
| 0:40.3 | that no president has previously invoked, and they must be temporary. Treasury Secretary Scott Besson told CNN State of the Union that the administration will likely impose other tariffs under more commonly used authorities, but those take longer to implement. |
| 0:55.5 | I think it's highly likely that those tariffs will rise up and that the 122s could disappear |
| 1:01.6 | after five months. There's also the option of asking Congress to enact higher tariffs, |
| 1:07.1 | but the administration has not signaled any willingness to do so. I'm Nova Safa for Marketplace. |
| 1:13.1 | The proposed new 15% global tariff talked about over the weekend does have carve-outs, |
| 1:18.6 | including for Mexico and Canada, so the import tax situations in those countries would be unchanged. |
| 1:24.7 | For businesses and markets, the fog is rolled back in, the fog of uncertainty. |
| 1:29.6 | Economist Julia Coronado is founder and president of macro policy perspectives and a professor |
| 1:34.0 | at the University of Texas, Austin. Remember that the lifting of the fog was supposed to be a |
| 1:40.4 | tailwind for the U.S. economy this year that we'd made some deals and the dust was |
| 1:45.3 | settling and now we've kicked up all the dust all over again. So the market doesn't quite know |
| 1:50.8 | what to do with it, but it certainly is another risk factor to add to the list. Gold is up quite |
| 1:57.7 | resolutely. That's a hedge. Yes, I think one of the reactions to policy chaos in the U.S. has been to seek safe havens. That's been a reliable trend, and that certainly seems to remain in place on this news. |
| 2:12.5 | Well, here's a note of certainty. U.S. Customs and Border Protection says it'll halt collections of tariffs imposed under |
| 2:19.5 | the Emergency Economic Powers Act, 12.01 a.m. Eastern on Tuesday. So there are halting collections. |
| 2:27.6 | That's a tangible thing. And it will take at least a few days to impose the new set of tariffs under the new guidelines and |
... |
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