U.S. Imposes New 10%-12.5% Tariffs on 60 Trading Partners as Prior Duties Expire

Two Tariffs, One Midnight

At 12:01 a.m. Eastern on Friday, July 24, 2026, one U.S. tariff died and another was born in the same second^[2][10]. The old one — a 10% duty on imports — expired because a law said it had to. The new one, 10% to 12.5% on goods from 60 trading partners, took its place before the clock finished ticking^[1][2].

That timing is not a coincidence. It's the second time this year the White House has had to find new legal footing just to keep a wall of tariffs standing^[8][11]. The new duties cover about 99% of everything the United States imports — nearly the entire flow of goods into the country got a new tax overnight^[1].

The reason given is forced labor. The U.S. Trade Representative's office says all 60 economies failed to keep goods made with forced labor out of their supply chains, and used that finding to justify the tariffs^[1]. Critics call that reasoning a stretch. Both readings sit on top of the same plain fact: the tariffs are real, and they took effect the moment the old ones couldn't legally continue^[1][2][10].

Why the Old Tariffs Had an Expiration Date

To understand why this happened now, you have to go back to February 2026. The Supreme Court ruled that a law called the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA, never actually gave a president the power to set tariffs^[11][12]. That ruling knocked out an earlier round of Trump tariffs entirely^[12].

The administration's backup was a different law, Section 122, which does let a president impose tariffs — but only for 150 days without a vote from Congress^[10][17]. Those tariffs went into effect in February 2026^[11]. Congress never voted to extend them, so the 150-day clock ran out on July 24^[10][17].

That left the administration with a choice: let the tariff wall fall, or find a third law to hold it up. It chose a third law. Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 lets the government tax imports tied to what it defines as unfair foreign trade practices, and this time officials pointed to forced labor as that practice^[1][9]. It's the same authority Trump used to tariff China during his first term, and those tariffs survived court challenges^[9].

Same Deadline, Different Rates

The new tariffs aren't one flat number. Countries that banned or promised to ban forced-labor imports got the lower rate, 10%. Countries that hadn't got 12.5%^[1][5]. The list cuts across the usual lines — it includes the European Union, Japan, South Korea, China, Canada, India, Mexico and the United Kingdom, allies and rivals alike^[5][6].

That's what makes the "who got hit" question interesting. South Korea and Japan, two of Washington's closest allies in Asia, both landed in the higher 12.5% bracket — the same tier as far less friendly trading partners^[3][4]. Semiconductors themselves aren't directly taxed, though imported AI servers and other data-processing equipment are^[5].

Brazil's government didn't accept the forced-labor framing. It called the tariffs "arbitrary and unjustified" and said Washington was using a real human-rights issue as leverage for a trade goal^[13]. The European Union and China both said they'd respond with their own countermeasures, while still pushing for talks to bring their individual rates down^[13]. South Korea says U.S. officials have told it privately its final rate won't exceed 15%, which suggests quiet negotiation is running alongside the public objections^[3].

A Law Meant to Punish One Practice, Used on 60 Countries

Here's the case for the tariffs, stated as strongly as its supporters make it. U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer says "decades of moral suasion" have failed to get forced labor out of global supply chains, and that harder tools are overdue^[1][7]. The economic logic: a factory that uses forced or unpaid labor can sell goods cheaper than an American factory paying real wages, so U.S. workers end up competing against labor that isn't paid at all. Taxing those imports, in this view, isn't protectionism — it's correcting a field that was never level^[1][7].

Here's the case against it, stated just as strongly. Section 301 was written to punish a specific unfair trade practice, proven country by country through a real investigation^[8][9]. Legal scholar Ilya Somin, writing at Reason, argues the Trade Representative's office instead relied on general studies rather than building an individual case against each of the 60 countries^[8]. His sharper point: if the real goal were stopping forced-labor goods specifically, the fix would be blocking those goods — not taxing almost everything a country sells to the U.S.^[8]

Somin also invokes something called the "major questions doctrine." It's a legal rule, drawn from other Supreme Court rulings, that says when the executive branch makes a decision with huge economic stakes, Congress has to have clearly and specifically given it that power. His argument is that Section 301 doesn't clearly authorize something this broad^[8][9]. That argument comes from an opinion piece, not a court ruling — a case being made, not a case that's been decided^[8]. What both sides agree on, whether or not they say so directly, is the underlying fact: two earlier legal paths to broad tariffs have already closed this year, and Section 301 is the administration's third attempt at the same destination^[8][11].

The Bill Nobody Has Priced Yet

Strip away the legal argument and the mechanics are simple. A 10% to 12.5% tax now applies at the border on goods covering about 99% of U.S. imports^[1]. American companies that import those goods pay the tax when it arrives. They typically pass at least some of that cost on to the businesses and shoppers who buy from them. The administration hasn't published an estimate of what that added cost will actually be^[7].

There's also a real question of whether these tariffs last. The IEEPA tariffs that came before them looked settled too, right up until the Supreme Court struck them down in February^[8][12]. Any company planning around the new Section 301 tariffs is doing so knowing a lawsuit could unwind them the same way.

A Bad Day on Wall Street, With Tariffs Barely in the Frame

The tariffs took effect the morning after a rough day for stocks. On Thursday, July 23, the Nasdaq fell about 2.2%, the S&P 500 about 1.2%, and the Dow about 1%^[14]. Alphabet dropped roughly 7% and Tesla about 14%, both after earnings reports that raised worries about how much money tech companies are spending on artificial intelligence^[14].

But that same day, Brent crude oil jumped toward $102 a barrel — its highest level in months — as fighting escalated in the Middle East^[14][15]. CNBC's own coverage described it as an "oil-driven sell-off"^[14]. Market reporting from that day points to the oil spike and the earnings misses as roughly equal drivers of the drop, with the incoming tariffs sitting in the background rather than named as the cause^[14][15]. A clean story where tariffs sank tech stocks doesn't hold up against what actually moved the market that day.

Coverage of the tariffs themselves split largely by which piece of the story each outlet led with. The Washington Examiner foregrounded the administration's own rationale, opening with Greer's forced-labor argument^[7]. Reason's opinion piece went the other way, calling the tariffs "illegal" and a "sham" in the writer's own voice, a stance consistent with its billing as commentary rather than news^[8]. Wire services split the difference — Reuters paired the U.S. action directly with pushback from trading partners, while The Hill flagged that the administration hadn't estimated the cost to consumers^[13][16]. None of it settles whether the tariffs survive their next day in court, or whether more countries talk their way to a lower rate the way South Korea appears to be doing^[3][8].