Tariffs by Other Means: When Law Defines US Grand Strategy

America’s latest tariffs are not a story about forced labour; they show how domestic constitutional constraints are reshaping US geopolitical power.

Salman Rafi Sheikh

The Constitution Has Entered America’s Trade War

For much of the post-Cold War era, Washington projected economic power with remarkable executive discretion. Tariffs, sanctions, export controls, and investment restrictions increasingly became instruments of grand strategy, allowing successive administrations to pursue geopolitical objectives without always deploying military force. That assumption was shaken on February 20, 2026, when the US Supreme Court, in a 6-3 ruling in Learning Resources v. Trump (consolidated with Trump v. V.O.S. Selections), held that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) does not authorize the president to impose tariffs at all. Chief Justice Roberts’s opinion turned on statutory text—the law lets the president “regulate” imports, not tax them—but three of the six justices in the majority went further, invoking the major questions doctrine to hold that a power this consequential requires unambiguous authorization from Congress. The ruling did not just strike down one set of duties; it unwound the legal premise of tariffs that had touched nearly every US trading partner. The decision forced the White House to rethink not its strategic ambitions but the legal foundations upon which they rested.

A superpower that keeps finding new laws to justify the same pressure on its allies may still win each individual tariff fight. But it risks teaching the rest of the world not to trust the terms it offers

The administration’s response has been swift and revealing, and it came in two stages rather than one. Within hours of the ruling, Trump invoked Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974—a narrower authority that permits a president to impose tariffs of up to 15 percent for balance-of-payments purposes, but only for 150 days unless Congress affirmatively extends them. That statutory clock was itself a concession to Congress’s taxing power, and it was always a stopgap. As it approached expiry, the administration reached for a sturdier vehicle: Section 301 of the same 1974 Act, which allows tariffs in response to “unreasonable” or discriminatory foreign trade practices found through a formal USTR (United States Trade Representative) investigation. Following an inquiry launched in March, proposed in June, and finalized this July after two rounds of hearings and more than 2,100 public comments, USTR imposed new tariffs of 10 to 12.5 percent on sixty economies—representing roughly 99 percent of US imports—replacing the expiring Section 122 duties. This time, however, the justification is no longer trade deficits or economic emergencies. It is forced labour. USTR’s finding was blunt: every one of the sixty economies, from major allies to the European Union itself, was judged to have either no ban on forced-labour imports or one that goes unenforced, creating what the agency called an unfair burden on American producers.

This legal pivot deserves far more attention than the tariff rates themselves. The Supreme Court did not end Washington’s use of economic coercion. Instead, it compelled the executive branch to repackage geopolitical strategy in a legally sustainable and morally compelling form—and to do so twice in five months, first through a time-limited emergency statute and then through a slower, evidence-based unfair-trade-practice statute built for durability rather than speed. In doing so, America’s constitutional order has begun to shape the language—and perhaps the future—of US grand strategy. That shift is profound. Domestic law is no longer merely constraining foreign policy; it is actively redesigning it.

From Economic Nationalism to Moralized Geoeconomics

The new tariffs illustrate an important evolution in American statecraft. The strategic objective remains familiar: protecting domestic industry, restructuring global supply chains, and preserving US economic leverage amid intensifying geopolitical competition. In short, ‘America First’ agenda remains alive. What has changed is the legal and normative vocabulary used to justify these goals.

USTR’s investigations concluded that the failure of sixty economies to prohibit or effectively enforce restrictions on goods produced with forced labour constitutes an “unreasonable” practice that burdens US commerce—a finding that, notably, drew no meaningful distinction between adversaries and treaty allies. Of the sixty, fourteen (including Canada, Mexico, India, Bangladesh, and the United Kingdom, alongside a mixed-rate tier covering the European Union, Japan, Korea, Switzerland, and Taiwan) qualified for the lower 10 percent rate because they maintain some prohibition, partial regime, or reciprocal trade commitment on forced labour; the remaining forty-six, a group that includes China but also numerous smaller developing economies, face the full 12.5 percent.

Whether these distinctions accurately capture global labour practices is almost beside the point. The more significant development is that human rights have become the primary legal architecture through which Washington now exercises economic power.

This reflects a broader transformation in international politics. Economic coercion increasingly relies on normative claims rather than purely commercial ones. The United States already employs sanctions to punish corruption and human rights abuses, export controls to safeguard national security, and investment restrictions to limit technological diffusion. Labour rights now join this expanding toolkit. However, unlike IEEPA’s emergency powers, Section 301 comes with an evidentiary record, a comment period, and prior precedent surviving judicial review, which makes it a far more litigation-resistant instrument than the one the Court just dismantled.

Therefore, the real innovation of the Trump administration lies in the convergence of constitutional law and geopolitical necessity. Having lost one legal instrument, the administration found another that could survive judicial scrutiny while preserving strategic flexibility. This is not simply protectionism with a new label. It is moralized geoeconomics, the fusion of legal legitimacy, ethical language, and geopolitical competition.

The Cost of Lost Predictability

International observers often analyse US foreign policy through the lens of China, industrial competition, or shifting alliances. They should also watch what these tariffs are doing to the trust that holds those alliances together.

The forced-labour tariffs fall hardest on countries that are not adversaries but allies. Canada, the EU, Japan, Korea, and the United Kingdom—partners with long-standing legal and enforcement regimes against forced labour — are taxed at rates close to those imposed on economies with no such regime at all. To these governments, the substance of the policy will register less than the pattern behind it: a partner whose market access can be redefined within months, under whichever statute survives the last court challenge, regardless of how much a country has already done to meet Washington’s stated concern.

That pattern corrodes trust in a way that outlasts any single tariff. Alliances function on the assumption that commitments made in good faith will be honored in kind and that market access, once negotiated, will not be re-litigated under a new legal theory every time a court closes the last one. When allies see the US cycle through IEEPA, then Section 122, then Section 301 to preserve the same tariffs on the same countries, they learn that the legal justification is negotiable, but the outcome is not. It is a lesson that makes American commitments harder to rely on, not easier.

The cost of that lesson will not show up immediately. It will show up in how allies move away from the US over time, i.e., by diversifying supply chains away from US-dependent routes, striking trade agreements that do not run through Washington, and treating future American assurances with the caveat that they hold only until the next legal workaround. A superpower that keeps finding new laws to justify the same pressure on its allies may still win each individual tariff fight. But it risks teaching the rest of the world not to trust the terms it offers.

Salman Rafi Sheikh, research analyst of international relations and Pakistan’s foreign and domestic affairs