The new round of tariffs President Donald Trump announced on social media last week, including levies on kitchen cabinets, bathroom vanities, upholstered furniture, select pharmaceutical products, and heavy trucks, will not be at stake when the Supreme Court hears oral argument on his “reciprocal” tariffs in November. They are governed by a different statute. But in both cases, the Trump administration has made fantastical claims that are undermined every time the president declares another product important to national security.
“We will be imposing a 50% Tariff on all Kitchen Cabinets, Bathroom Vanities, and associated products,” Trump posted on social media at 7:10 p.m. on Sept. 25. “Additionally, we will be charging a 30% Tariff on Upholstered Furniture. The reason for this is the large-scale ‘FLOODING’ of these products into the United States by other outside Countries. It is a very unfair practice, but we must protect, for National Security and other reasons, our Manufacturing process.”
The fairness of international upholstered furniture trade is perhaps worthy of attention, but it is not the legal justification Trump is relying on to implement his new levies. Instead, he has national security under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962. This allows the commerce secretary to investigate whether “an article is being imported into the United States in such quantities or under such circumstances as to threaten to impair the national security of the United States.”
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Section 232 does not define the term “national security,” but in addition to identifying “domestic production required for projected U.S. defense needs” and “capacity of domestic industry to meet such needs,” the statute also directs the commerce secretary to consider “the impact of foreign competition on the economic welfare” on domestic industry including loss of employment, investment, and skills.
One can argue that domestic heavy truck manufacturing is a matter of national security since the ability and knowledge to turn steel, aluminum, lithium, and cobalt into operational machinery are essential to the nation’s defense.
But bathroom vanities? Kitchen cabinets? Upholstered furniture? Domestic production of these items employs thousands of people and involves millions of dollars in investment, but so does the production of every good bought and sold in the U.S. There must be a limiting principle. If everything made domestically requires knowledge, labor, and investment, and every import competes with domestically produced goods, then every product would qualify for tariffs under Section 232. That cannot be what Congress intended when it wrote the Trade Expansion Act of 1962.
This is where Trump’s invocation of Section 232 overlaps with the “reciprocal” tariffs case, in which the Supreme Court will hear arguments next month. In that case, Trump v. V.O.S. Selections, the president claims that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 gives him complete power to “regulate” imports and exports, including by imposing tariffs even though the word “tariff” is not in the statute, if he has declared a “national emergency.” In this case, Trump cites “balance-of-payments deficits” as a national security emergency, although by definition, “emergencies” are temporal, and the U.S. has run balance-of-payments deficits for more than 40 years.
In oral argument before the Federal Circuit, administration lawyers offered no limiting principles to the tariff power conferred on the president by the IEEPA. They lost, and they will probably lose again in the Supreme Court. They should.
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If so, expect more announcements from Trump on a laundry list of imported goods. Just as his claimed IEEPA tariff powers have no limiting principle, neither do his Section 232 powers. Those will need to be challenged in court, and again, Trump will lose. In the meantime, consumers and manufacturers will be plagued by higher prices and uncertainty.
Trump’s ballooning definition of “national security” is bad economics and bad law. By treating kitchen cabinets and bathroom vanities as strategic assets, he erodes the concept Section 232 sought to safeguard. The Supreme Court will reject his boundless IEEPA theory, and federal courts should do the same with his Section 232 overreach. Until then, we’ll all keep paying the price for a presidency that confuses political expediency with national security.
