Hikes Face immediate court challenge
NEW YORK (TIP): U.S. President Donald Trump’s latest set of tariffs drew objections Friday, July 24, from America’s trading partners including China and Japan, with Australia’s trade minister slamming them as “completely unjustified”, says AP.
The administration announced tariffs of 10% to 12.5% on 60 economies late Thursday, saying the countries had failed to adequately enforce a ban on goods made with forced labor.
The new tariffs took effect just as stopgap levies Trump imposed after a stinging defeat at the Supreme Court expired at 12:01 a.m. Friday, July 24, 2026.
Countries object to what they call unfounded labor claims
Australian Trade Minister Don Farrell rejected claims linking Australia, a major exporter of beef, gold and copper, to modern slavery and raising the tariff on its exports to the U.S. to 12.5% from the 10% level imposed after Trump’s “Liberation Day” hikes last year.
“We believe that amongst all of the countries in the world Australia does take the issue of slavery, modern slavery, seriously, and will continue to do that,” Farrell told reporters in Adelaide.
Australia believes the higher tariffs are “completely unjustified and we will continue to lobby the United States Trade Representative to remove all tariffs on Australian goods,” Farrell said.
New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said the tariffs on his country, also subject to a 12.5% import duty, were “extremely disappointing,” unjustified and harmful to trade.
Trump’s newest tariffs face immediate court challenge
The Liberty Justice Center, a libertarian advocacy group that successfully challenged earlier Trump tariffs, filed a lawsuit in the U.S. Court of International Trade in New York, challenging the double-digit import taxes that Trump imposed Friday.
The Trump administration, invoking the Trade Act of 1974, targeted 16 U.S. trading partners with tariffs of 10% to 12.5%, charging that they had failed to crack down on imports produced by forced labor.
But the Liberty Justice Center calls the new tariffs a pretext to allow Trump to maintain a wall of tariffs around the U.S. economy after the Supreme Court struck down big global taxes he’d imposed last year.
The new levies took effect at 12:01 a.m. Friday as time ran out on temporary tariffs Trump had turned to after the Supreme Court defeat.
“The administration allowed one global tariff to expire and immediately replaced it with another under a different statute,” said Sara Albrecht, chair of the Liberty Justice Center. “Changing the statute doesn’t change the law. Every tariff authority has limits, and every administration must respect them.”
Her group represented businesses that successfully challenged Trump’s 2025 global tariffs.
There has been no comment yet from India, another trading partner of the US.
(With inputs from AP)
Source link
