If the Supreme Court strikes down President Trump’s tariffs, the Trump administration plans to replace them with other levies almost immediately, United States Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said in an interview.
Mr. Greer, Mr. Trump’s top trade negotiator, said in an interview with The New York Times on Jan. 15 that after a negative decision, the administration would “begin reimposing the tariffs the next day to respond to the problems identified by the president.”
Mr. Greer expressed optimism that the Supreme Court, which is currently considering the president’s use of an emergency law that underlies most of his tariffs, would rule in the administration’s favor. But Mr. Greer said that early in his term, he and other advisers gave the president “many different options” for achieving his trade goals, meaning the president could turn to different justice agencies to impose similar tariffs around the world.
“The reality is that the president will impose tariffs as part of his trade policy in the future,” Greer said.
The Supreme Court has been considering the legality of the president’s use of a 1977 law called the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose tariffs on trading partners around the world last year. The court could decide in the coming weeks, possibly as early as Tuesday, to revoke all or part of that authority.
Alternatively, the court could decide to uphold the president’s actions. Over the last year, Mr. Trump has declared numerous international emergencies for a variety of reasons, quickly raising and lowering tariffs on trading partners. The president has imposed tariffs to reduce trade deficits, stop the flow of illegal drugs and address other international problems.
On Saturday, Mr. Trump outraged the European Union by threatening to impose tariffs on exports from seven European countries unless a deal was reached to sell Greenland, a territory of Denmark, to the United States. Ted Murphy, an attorney at Sidley Austin, said in an email response that he believed Mr. Trump would likely rely on IEEPA, the emergency law reviewed by the courts, to enforce those tariffs.
“I am not aware of any other trade laws that would cover this situation (e.g., the refusal of another nation to sell its sovereign territory to the United States),” Murphy wrote.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent tried to justify the president’s use of emergency law on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, saying tariffs would be preferred to armed conflict over Greenland.
“The national emergency avoids a national emergency,” Bessent said, adding that the president “used the economic power of the United States to prevent a hot war.”
Critics called the president’s threats of tariffs against Europe a brazen abuse of emergency law. And some legal experts said the president was complicating his own legal battle by threatening such perverse use of the emergency law.
“Emergency powers are for emergencies,” Sen. Rand Paul, a Republican from Kentucky, said on Meet the Press. “There is no emergency in Greenland. This is ridiculous.”
Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at Georgetown University Law Center, said it was “not exactly a good look for the Trump administration as it tries to persuade the Supreme Court to support a novel and textless interpretation of the IEEPA” to threaten an even more novel use of the same law.
“President Trump is doing his own legal arguments a disservice,” Mr. Vladeck added.
But even if the court does indeed rule against Mr. Trump, it remains to be seen to what extent that would limit the president’s ability to impose tariffs.
Eswar Prasad, an economics professor at Cornell University, said that an adverse ruling could force a change in tactics or tariffs from the president, but that Mr. Trump appeared to be sticking to his pattern of aggressively using tariffs as a tool to further his geopolitical ambitions.
“At this rate, even a Supreme Court ruling is unlikely to soften its approach to using tariffs to go after other countries,” Mr. Prasad said.
The president can resort to other powerful tariff laws that allow him to impose import tariffs on the exports of various products or countries. But those laws typically require either an investigation, the production of a report or an economic or national security justification, meaning Mr. Trump would have less flexibility to threaten tariffs on a whim. The president has also threatened Canada with tariffs for running television ads criticizing its approach to trade and imposed tariffs on Brazilian exports over the prosecution of former leader Jair Bolsonaro, a political ally of Mr. Trump.
In the interview, Mr. Greer said that Mr. Trump had other alternatives, such as Section 301, which he used in his first term to impose tariffs on Chinese exports and which has survived many legal challenges. The president could also impose tariffs using Section 232, a national security law, Section 122, a legal authority that relates to balance of payments issues, or Section 338, which allows the United States to respond if another country clearly discriminates against it, Mr. Greer said.
“Congress has appropriately delegated many tariff powers to the President of the United States,” Mr. Greer said.