The hope was that a Supreme Court ruling would give more clarity about the future of tariffs.
But after the highest court in the nation struck down President Trump’s enactment of tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), suppliers and distributors across promo are left with more questions than answers.
For Craig Nadel, the president and CEO of Counselor Top 40 distributor Nadel (asi/279600) and a member of Counselor’s Power 50 list of most influential people in promo, there’s an overwhelming sense of uncertainty around what comes next.
“If these rules were set and clear, people could work around them,” Nadel says. “But when they’re changing all the time, it’s more difficult. The uncertainty is an issue for almost every business.”
Here, Counselor recaps the latest shifts in the tariff landscape, how suppliers and distributors are handling these changes, and what promo companies need to know if they’re hoping for refunds on tariffs they’ve already paid.
What We Know So Far
On Friday, the Supreme Court ruled that President Trump didn’t have legal authority to enact many of the tariffs he implemented over the last year. The ruling applies to the barrage of reciprocal tariffs Trump imposed on nearly all countries last year, as well as higher, “trafficked” tariffs on countries including Canada, Mexico and China. (Trump justified those latter tariffs by tying them to the flow of illegal drugs, including fentanyl, into the U.S., which is why they were labeled “trafficked” tariffs.)
This means that, as of Tuesday, February 24, importers are no longer required to make payments to U.S. Customs and Border Protection on goods entering the country under the IEEPA tariffs.
The ruling applies to most of Trump’s tariffs, but several tariffs issued under other justifications remain intact. For example, importers will still be required to pay the 25% steel and aluminum tariff imposed under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, which gives the president power to restrict imports that threaten national security.
As expected, the Trump administration pivoted to other justifications to impose new global tariffs. Shortly after the Supreme Court ruling, the White House issued a proclamation imposing a temporary 10% tariff on imports from most countries using Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, which gives the president power to impose temporary import duties to address balance-of-payments deficits. He threatened to increase this figure to 15%, the maximum under Section 122, though the White House has not formalized that increase, nor has it released a timeline for doing so.
The 10% global tariffs took effect Tuesday, but will only be active for 150 days, at which time they will be subject to congressional authorization. The new tariffs include several product exemptions that mirror many of the goods exempt from the IEEPA tariffs, including but not limited to certain electronics and textile and apparel products that entered duty-free under CAFTA-DR. This means that the baseline tariff rate on key promo hubs like India and China will go down for the time being.
Read this full article on ASI Central.
