United States President, Donald Trump says imports from countries supplying Iran with military weapons will face immediate 50 percent tariffs with no exemptions, announcing the threatened duty in a social media post just hours after agreeing to a two-week ceasefire with Tehran.
Trump’s Truth Social post on Wednesday did not specify which legal authority he would invoke to impose such tariffs, as the Supreme Court in February struck down his use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, IEEPA, to impose broad global tariffs, prompting a lower court to order refunds of some $166bn collected over the course of a year.
The 1977 IEEPA law has been used extensively for decades to back financial sanctions against Iran, Russia and North Korea, but the court ruled that Trump overstepped his authority in using it to impose trade tariffs.
“A Country supplying Military Weapons to Iran will be immediately tariffed, on any and all goods sold to the United States of America, 50%, effective immediately. There will be no exclusions or exemptions! President DJT,” Trump wrote.
However, “it’s a lot more complicated to do that after IEEPA was struck down”, Rachel Ziemba, adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, told Al Jazeera. “There’s no immediate policy lever and authorisation that is available for the US to do that. So they need either an act of Congress or need to adapt some other trade tool, and there isn’t really a national security-oriented trade tool.”
Trump did not name any countries that could face punitive tariffs. China and Russia have helped Iran build military capacity to counter US and Israeli pressure, supplying missiles, air defence systems and technology intended to bolster deterrence.
But that support appeared capped during the US-Israeli attacks on Iran. Both Beijing and Moscow have denied supplying any weapons recently, although allegations against Moscow have persisted.
The Reuters news agency has previously reported that Tehran was considering a purchase of supersonic antiship cruise missiles from China. In March, Reuters reported that China’s top semiconductor maker, SMIC, has sent chipmaking tools to Iran’s military, according to two senior Trump administration officials.
“This is a China-related threat, the way I read it. And China will read it that way,” said Josh Lipsky, vice president and chair of international economics at the Atlantic Council.
Although drone and missile parts routinely flow from Chinese entities to Iran, evading US sanctions, Lipsky said Trump was unlikely to follow through with new tariffs in the near term because that would derail his planned trip to Beijing to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping in mid-May.
“US tariffs on Chinese products have gone down a lot since the court ruling,” said Ziemba, “and slapping on 50 percent tariffs now would be very expensive, especially for US importers and consumers.”
Moreover, with the Trump-Xi meeting looming, “this is kind of an empty threat, but shows that when push comes to shove, Trump comes back to tariffs”, Ziemba said.
Aljazeera/Adetutu Adetule
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