Can the President Impose Tariffs on Countries Instead of Products?

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A tariff aimed at a foreign country can leave an American importer owing the tax. Presidents can target imports by country when Congress has granted that power, but the charge still applies to imported goods.

In February 2026 the Supreme Court held that an emergency-powers law does not authorize tariffs, and tariffs since imposed on 60 trading partners under a different law are being challenged in court.

A country can be the target while goods carry the tax

A tariff is a tax on imported goods and services, according to the Congressional Research Service; the tariffs discussed here fall on goods. U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the agency administering customs rules at ports of entry, reviews importers’ declarations and collects applicable tariffs. Calling a policy a “tariff on China” describes the target of the rule, not a payment sent from Beijing to Washington.

CBP’s guidance on additional tariffs on Chinese goods uses both Chinese country of origin and the relevant Harmonized Tariff Schedule classification to determine whether imported goods face an additional duty. The Harmonized Tariff Schedule is the product-classification system behind the customs charge, so country and product can be overlapping tests rather than competing choices. A country-based rule can reach unrelated products from the same place, while exemptions can remove particular goods from its scope.

For example, the U.S. Trade Representative imposed tariffs of 10 percent or 12.5 percent on 60 trading partners, subject to product exemptions, over what it determined was their failure to ban imports made with forced labor and enforce the ban. Those forced-labor tariffs were announced on July 23, 2026, and took effect July 24; CBP’s guidance matches ordinary product classifications to additional headings in Chapter 99 of the tariff schedule, where this action’s additional duties and exemptions are listed.

Congress grants authority before a president uses it

The Constitution gives Congress the power to lay and collect duties and to regulate commerce with foreign nations. Congress has enacted laws allowing presidents to adjust tariff rates in particular circumstances, and courts have generally upheld those delegations against constitutional challenges. Congress need not vote separately on every tariff when an existing law already delegates the relevant power. The president must still act within that law’s conditions; an announcement cannot substitute for statutory authority.

The Constitution also requires duties to be uniform throughout the United States. The Supreme Court has read that as a geographic rule: a duty must operate with the same force and effect in every place the taxed item is found.

Different tariff laws answer different problems

Congress has passed several tariff laws, and each has its own trigger and limits. A trade dispute, a national-security concern and an international payments problem fall under different statutes.

Section 301 of the Trade Act lets the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR), the executive office responsible for this trade-enforcement process, respond to foreign practices it determines are unreasonable or discriminatory and burden or restrict U.S. commerce, when action is appropriate. Its authorized responses include duties or other import restrictions on goods from the foreign country involved, subject to the statute’s conditions and presidential direction. The alleged problem can be a foreign government’s policy, even though the resulting charge attaches to imported merchandise.

On September 13, 2024, for example, USTR announced final changes to its China tariffs after a four-year review required by law, in a Section 301 action concerning China’s practices on technology transfer, intellectual property and innovation. Even with a country as the target, USTR has to identify the foreign practice and follow the statute’s process. For the forced-labor investigations, USTR says it opened 60 investigations on March 12, 2026, held public hearings on April 28 and 29, and consulted more than 45 governments. USTR says its June 2, 2026 determinations found that the economies’ failure to impose and effectively enforce a ban on imports produced with forced labor was unreasonable and burdened or restricted U.S. commerce. Those are the agency’s findings supporting its action, rather than a court’s judgment that the resulting tariffs are lawful.

Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act concerns imports that threaten to impair national security, following a Commerce Department investigation and report. If Commerce reports a threat, the president has 90 days to decide whether to concur and what action to take. The president must explain the decision to Congress within 30 days and carry out any action within 15 days of deciding to act. This route ties import adjustments to a national-security finding about the imported articles involved, so it starts from the product.

Section 122 of the Trade Act authorizes temporary import measures for large and serious balance-of-payments deficits, an imminent significant depreciation of the dollar, or cooperation in correcting an international payments imbalance. Its import surcharge cannot exceed 15 percent and cannot last beyond 150 days unless Congress extends the period by law. The balance of payments is the record of transactions between U.S. and foreign residents, including goods, services, income, assets and liabilities, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. A goods trade deficit is only part of that wider accounting, so the two terms should not be treated as interchangeable.

Section 122 generally requires nondiscriminatory treatment and broad, uniform product coverage, but permits specified product exceptions and action limited to countries with large or persistent balance-of-payments surpluses. President Trump used Section 122 in February 2026 to impose a temporary 10 percent import surcharge for 150 days, effective February 24, with specified product exceptions.

Section 338 of the Tariff Act permits additional duties to offset discriminatory foreign treatment that disadvantages U.S. commerce, when the president finds action serves the public interest. That provision caps the additional duty at 50 percent of the goods’ value, or its equivalent, and provides for collection beginning 30 days after the proclamation.

The safeguard provisions of the Trade Act address serious injury, or its threat, to a domestic industry and authorize action intended to help that industry adjust to import competition when the economic and social benefits exceed the costs. An injury-based safeguard asks a different question from whether another government is treating U.S. commerce unfairly.

The emergency law permits restrictions, but not tariffs

The International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) allows action against an unusual and extraordinary threat originating wholly or substantially abroad to U.S. national security, foreign policy or the economy, after the president declares a national emergency. Its transaction powers include blocking, regulating or prohibiting imports and exports involving property in which a foreign country or national has an interest. A prohibition can stop covered trade; a tariff instead charges money when goods enter. Presidential power to restrict trade thus does not automatically include power to tax it.

One IEEPA order shows how a tariff aimed at a country’s conduct was designed. President Trump’s Executive Order 14382, Addressing Threats to the United States by the Government of Iran, was issued on February 6, 2026. It said an additional duty, for example 25 percent, may be imposed on products of countries directly or indirectly acquiring Iranian goods or services, subject to further procedures. The order called for a Commerce finding, a State Department recommendation and then a presidential decision on whether and to what extent to impose a duty. That is a test of a country’s conduct applied to goods, not a tax collected directly from a foreign state.

On February 20, 2026, the Supreme Court held in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump that IEEPA does not authorize presidential tariffs. The litigation concerned tariffs justified by illegal drugs from Canada, Mexico and China and by large, persistent trade deficits. The Supreme Court explained that tariffs operate directly on domestic importers to raise Treasury revenue and are different in kind from IEEPA’s transaction powers. Declaring an emergency is therefore insufficient to create tariff authority under that statute. The ruling resolved the statutory authority question against the government; it did not settle whether tariffs are desirable policy.

The business challengers, Learning Resources and hand2mind, argued that the power to regulate imports did not confer taxing power and contrasted IEEPA with laws that expressly authorize duties under stated limits, such as Section 122’s 15 percent ceiling and 150-day limit. They also argued that an unrestricted tariff power would lack the congressional guidance needed for a lawful delegation, including limits on countries, products, rates and duration. Their brief described repeated tariff changes as a source of economic uncertainty and argued that the government’s reading would let presidents rewrite import-tax law.

In the litigation, the government argued that regulating importation in a foreign-affairs delegation naturally included tariffs because they are a traditional means of regulating imports. It also argued that Section 122 and IEEPA are each an independent source of authority, so a president who acts under one need not comply with the other’s limits.

Executive Order 14389, issued February 20, 2026, listed the Iran order among the orders whose IEEPA duties it directed to end and stop being collected as soon as practicable. A direction to end collection does not show whether a particular importer had paid a duty under the Iran order.

The Supreme Court issued its judgment in Learning Resources on March 24, 2026. Under the Supreme Court’s rules, in a case from a federal court, its clerk sends the lower court a copy of the opinion and a certified copy of the judgment.

Separate challenges to the Section 301 forced-labor tariffs are consolidated in the U.S. Court of International Trade as In Re: Section 301 Forced Labor Cases, which includes the challenge brought by Burlap and Barrel and Collective Horology, according to their counsel’s notice. The trade court panel heard the forced-labor tariff challenge on Sept. 30 and gave no ruling timeline, according to Zoe Tillman’s October 1, 2026 Bloomberg News report republished by Transport Topics. A decision rejecting one source of presidential authority does not supply approval for another.

Why governments impose tariffs, and who bears the cost

The Congressional Research Service describes tariff goals as protecting domestic industries, advancing foreign-policy objectives and creating negotiating leverage; historically, tariffs also raised substantial government revenue. Those goals can point toward different targets: protecting an industry centers on its products, while bargaining with a government may center on their origin.

President Trump’s April 2, 2025 order imposing what it called a reciprocal tariff, one of the IEEPA orders behind the Supreme Court case, argued that asymmetric trading relationships weakened domestic production and the defense-industrial base. It pointed to foreign tariff disparities and non-tariff barriers, including technical trade barriers and inadequate intellectual-property protections, as obstacles to U.S. exports. It also argued that lost industrial capacity compromised military readiness and required swift corrective action. That argument connects economic capacity with national security; it is a policy rationale, distinct from proof that a particular law authorizes the chosen tariff.

The White House’s Council of Economic Advisers offered a different price comparison in July 2025: it reported that the imported-goods component of a consumer spending price index fell 0.1 percent from December 2024 through May 2025, while overall goods prices rose 0.4 percent, and argued that this contradicted warnings of tariff-driven inflation. That comparison covers an earlier, shorter period than the New York Fed study below and measures price movements rather than how the tariff bill was divided.

Collecting a duty from an importer does not establish how much the importer, its customers or foreign suppliers ultimately absorb. A February 12, 2026 analysis published by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Liberty Street Economics found nearly 90 percent of the 2025 tariffs’ economic burden fell on U.S. firms and consumers. Its authors, Mary Amiti, Chris Flanagan, Sebastian Heise and David E. Weinstein, used import data through November 2025.

Federal Reserve researchers Aaron Flaaen and Justin Pierce found that manufacturing industries more exposed to the 2018 and 2019 tariff increases experienced relative employment reductions, as higher input costs and retaliation outweighed the benefits of import protection. Their analysis also associated higher tariffs with relative increases in producer prices through rising input costs.

The Agriculture Department estimated that foreign retaliation was associated with more than $27 billion in U.S. agricultural export losses from mid-2018 through the end of 2019. Each of these studies measured particular tariffs over a particular period; none shows an assured result from every future measure.

How tariffs end, and where an importer can check

Congress can repeal, amend or restrict the statutory authorities that allow presidential tariffs, according to the Congressional Research Service’s legal analysis. Delegation does not mean Congress has permanently surrendered control of tariff law. Under the National Emergencies Act, a national emergency ends when a joint resolution terminating it is enacted into law or the president issues a terminating proclamation, subject to the statute’s provisions preserving certain earlier actions and proceedings. A vote or a political objection alone is not the same as an enacted change in legal authority.

A Section 301 action ordinarily terminates after four years unless a petitioner or a benefiting domestic-industry representative requests continuation within the final 60 days of that period.

A product exclusion removes a specified product from an additional tariff; USTR’s 2018 China process allowed the public to request one.

For China Section 301 exclusions, USTR’s China Section 301-Tariff Actions and Exclusion Process page links to the applicable exclusion information and machinery-exclusion process and provides a hotline for questions. Check the process and product description for the applicable tariff program; an exclusion under one action does not establish relief from every additional duty.

For a shipment, CBP’s implementation guidance connects the ordinary product classification with the additional Chapter 99 headings, country rules and specified exceptions. Check the rule for the actual entry rather than relying on a headline naming the country.

Ending the IEEPA tariffs did not by itself return duties already paid; refunds are a separate process. CBP’s Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries (CAPE) system handles eligible IEEPA refund requests through the Automated Commercial Environment (ACE) portal; a CAPE declaration lists the import entries for which a refund is requested. Only the importer of record for those entries, or the authorized customs broker who filed them on that importer’s behalf, may file the declaration.

Liquidation is CBP’s final assessment of duties on an import entry. CBP says CAPE accepts certain unliquidated entries and certain entries liquidated within the preceding 80 days. For an exemption not claimed when the goods entered, CBP’s separate FAQ says a protest may be filed within 180 days after liquidation and directs entry-specific questions to its Centers of Excellence and Expertise. The 180-day protest period for a missed exemption should not be confused with CAPE’s 80-day window for liquidated entries; the correct process depends on the entry and the issue.

CBP’s IEEPA duty-refund guidance, updated 9/2/2026, describes Automated Commercial Environment (ACE) reports for tracking accepted refund declarations, entry-level amounts and successful or rejected refunds.