WASHINGTON — President Trump’s senior trade and manufacturing counselor, Peter Navarro, has a “Plan B” to slap more tariffs on trading partners in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to do away with “emergency tariffs.”
In an interview with “Pod Force One,” Navarro said that the high court didn’t mention any use of tariffs under different executive authorities, including Sections 301 and 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, and 338 of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930.
“All the different powers that the President has have been delegated by Congress and can use — and we will be using,” he told The Post’s Miranda Devine on the latest episode, out Wednesday.
“And the decision itself, because those powers were referenced repeatedly by a number of justices, have been strengthened. So, when we go to court, the next time, they always drag us into court, we have the Supreme Court on our side.”
Last Friday, the Supreme Court shot down Trump’s use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to impose tariffs at will.
The Supreme Court’s majority opinion didn’t weigh in on the legality of Trump’s other tariff authorities, though conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh referenced them as an option in his dissent — which Navarro took note of in his Post sit-down.
“We don’t see this as having struck a heavy blow,” Navarro explained, referring to how the Supreme Court shut down the IEEPA tariffs specifically. “We believe that this will actually be a very good thing for the Trump tariff policy, because if you analyze the decision, Miranda, it was very narrow in scope.”
IEEPA tariffs constituted about $133 billion of the roughly $251 billion worth of tariff revenue collected in fiscal years 2025 and 2026 as of last December, according to data from US Customs and Border Protection.
Trump favored IEEPA, a statute that never mentioned the word “tariff” and has never been used by another US president to impose them, because his other trade authorities are more onerous and complicated.
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After the setback from the Supreme Court, Trump reimplemented a baseline tariff rate under Section 122 of the US Trade Act of 1974, bumping it up from its prior 10% to 15%.
The increase in worldwide baseline tariffs is because Trump’s ability to easily impose customized rates on specific countries under IEEPA has been shut down.
To impose country-specific tariffs, Trump’s team intends to use Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, which requires US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer to first conduct investigations on the trade practices of other countries before imposing specific retaliatory duties.
The Section 122 tariffs are set to expire after 150 days of issuance unless Congress re-ups them, which is not expected. That’s why the Trump administration is conducting studies and taking other steps to tap into his other authorities.
“It’s a very flexible tool,” Navarro stressed when asked about why the Trump administration went with IEEPA to impose the “Liberation Day” tariffs.
“We knew going in that there was a possibility that they [the IEEPA tariffs] would be struck down.”
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Navarro, who has long been an advocate of protectionist trade policies, contended that Trump’s tariff regime has been critical to bringing back manufacturing to the US.
The White House manufacturing honcho noted that his favorite economic indicator for tracking the US is the Institute of Supply Management Manufacturing Index.
“When it’s below 50[%], then manufacturing is in decline,” he said. “When it’s above 50[%], manufacturing is expanding,” the trade adviser continued. “It’s been since August of 2022, during the Biden regime, that that index fell below 50[%].”
“I mean, [former President Joe] Biden was just killing our manufacturing. And when we got in, that thing was stubbornly lagging below 50[%] for many, many months, even as some of these other manufacturing indicators said, ‘No, things are good,’” he added.
“Finally, in the last time around, it jumped five points, well into above 50[%] territory. And that’s what’s happening,” he said.
