President Trump is preparing to impose fresh tariffs on as many as sixty countries within days, using a forced-labor investigation to sidestep the Supreme Court ruling that struck down his original "Liberation Day" levies, even as his own senior advisers privately urge restraint.
The White House has drawn up options for a new round of duties ranging from 10 to 12.5 percent on roughly sixty nations, the Daily Mail reported, with the announcement expected as early as this week. The move comes as the blanket 10 percent global tariff, the fallback regime that replaced the reciprocal tariffs after the Supreme Court struck them down, is set to lapse on Friday.
Trump is not waiting for that deadline quietly. On Monday he hammered Canada with a 50 percent levy on a sweep of goods. Days earlier, he slapped 25 percent duties on Brazilian imports. Both actions signal that the president intends to escalate, not retreat, on trade, regardless of the political headwinds building ahead of the midterms.
The legal architecture behind the new tariffs matters. After the Supreme Court struck down the sweeping Liberation Day levies Trump announced in the Rose Garden on April 2, 2025, the White House lost its fastest route to broad-based tariffs. The administration has since leaned on a patchwork of procedural trade laws to keep duties in place, and the forced-labor investigation, first floated by trade officials in June, gives the president a new statutory hook that does not depend on the emergency powers the Court rejected.
A separate probe into excess manufacturing capacity has swept up an even wider list of trading partners: the European Union, China, Japan, India, Mexico, South Korea, Vietnam, Taiwan, Switzerland, Norway, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Cambodia, and Bangladesh. That investigation could lead to far steeper duties down the road.
Newsmax reported that the new duties on sixty countries would be imposed through a Section 301 investigation into forced labor practices, confirming the administration's strategy of bypassing the emergency-powers route the Supreme Court shut down. The outlet also noted that the 50 percent tariff on certain Canadian goods covers roughly $20 billion in trade and takes effect in thirty days.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney pledged to defend Canadian workers and businesses, while Ontario Premier Doug Ford urged Ottawa to respond "tariff for tariff, dollar for dollar." The cross-border friction echoes a pattern that has defined Trump's trade posture toward Ottawa, one that has included threats to add Canadian wildfire smoke costs to tariffs and other measures that caught trading partners off guard.
Senior White House officials have privately urged Trump to keep the peace with trading partners and honor the deals Washington cut in 2025, when countries negotiated their tariff rates down after the Liberation Day shock. After recent inquiries into critical minerals and airplane parts, those same officials advised negotiating rather than reaching for new tariffs.
Trump has brushed that counsel aside. US trade envoys carved out exemptions for staples such as beef and coffee and softened levies on steel and aluminum goods, concessions that suggest at least some internal voices are trying to limit the damage. But the overall trajectory is toward more duties, not fewer.
The tension between the president and his advisers is not new. Trump has consistently treated tariffs as leverage, a tool for forcing better terms rather than a static policy. His earlier decision to refuse renewal of the USMCA opened a new chapter in the North American trade fight, and the current escalation follows the same logic: press hard now, negotiate later.
The imminent sixty-country round is only one piece of a larger offensive. Earlier this year, Trump signed an executive order formalizing his reciprocal tariffs policy, imposing a baseline 10 percent tariff on most trading partners with higher rates for specific nations. Breitbart reported that the order set tariffs to take effect August 7, with goods loaded before that date and arriving before October 5 exempt from the levies. Rates ranged as high as 41 percent for Syria, 40 percent for Myanmar and Laos, and 39 percent for Switzerland.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt framed the approach as an exercise of presidential power on behalf of American workers:
"We have never had a president who wields the full power of the United States to negotiate good deals for our country and its people like President Trump. This is what maximum leverage looks like."
The administration also released a revised list of tariff rates against nearly seventy countries, the New York Post reported, following a four-month negotiating sprint. Brazil faces a 50 percent rate beginning August 6. Canada faces a 35 percent rate after a 10-percentage-point increase. Trump secured a deal with the European Union setting a 15 percent tariff in exchange for the bloc agreeing to purchase $750 billion in American energy and invest $600 billion in the United States.
That EU deal is the kind of concrete outcome Trump's supporters point to when defending the tariff strategy. But the sheer number of countries affected, and the speed at which rates keep changing, has rattled markets. Ford Motor Co. warned of a net $2 billion hit to earnings this year from tariffs, and the Associated Press reported that the tariff order's one-week delay to update the schedule only underscored how rapidly the rules were shifting.
Legal challenges remain live. Judge Todd Hughes of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit told a Justice Department lawyer during arguments over the tariffs' constitutionality: "You're asking for an unbounded authority." The remark captures the core question courts are weighing, whether the president can reshape global trade unilaterally at this scale.
The tariff push is landing in an economy that is already feeling strain. Brent crude climbed above $90 per barrel this week, with boiling geopolitical tensions involving Iran convulsing global energy markets. Gasoline topped $4 per gallon. The Cleveland Federal Reserve's latest nowcast puts annual inflation near 3.3 percent, well above the Fed's 2 percent target and a persistent drag on household budgets.
Those numbers feed directly into the political environment. A Daily Mail/JL Partners poll conducted this month found Democrats holding a nine-point lead on the midterm ballot, 50 percent to 41 percent. More than half of voters rated Trump's handling of the economy as bad, and more than half said conditions are worsening. Geopolitical flashpoints, including a reported Iranian assassination plot against Trump, add to the sense of global instability that voters are pricing into their assessments.
For a president who built his political brand on economic performance, those numbers are a warning sign. The question is whether the tariff strategy produces enough visible wins, cheaper energy imports, reshored manufacturing, better trade terms, before voters render judgment. The administration has shown it can cut deals: South Korea, the European Union, Britain, Japan, and others have negotiated lower rates. But each new round of duties risks erasing those gains in the eyes of consumers watching grocery and gas prices climb.
Trump has also moved aggressively on trade fronts that do not fit neatly into the tariff framework. His decision to declare a food supply emergency and lift tariffs on Moroccan fertilizer showed a willingness to reverse course when American farmers face direct harm, a pragmatic streak that complicates the picture of a president simply piling on duties without regard for consequences.
When the global 10 percent tariff lapses on Friday, the administration will either have a new tariff regime ready or face a gap in its trade architecture. The forced-labor investigation gives the White House a legal basis to move quickly, and the excess-manufacturing-capacity probe provides a second track for even broader action. Both routes avoid the emergency-powers authority the Supreme Court already rejected.
Senior officials may prefer negotiation. Markets may prefer certainty. But Trump has made clear, through the Canada levy, the Brazil duties, and the sixty-country plan now sitting on his desk, that he views tariffs as the tool that forces both.
Whether the strategy delivers results or deepens the economic pain voters are already reporting, one thing is settled: the president is not listening to the people telling him to slow down. He never has. The midterms will tell him whether the country agrees.
