Since the Supreme Court struck down Donald Trump’s International Emergency Economic Powers Act tariffs in February, administration officials have been working to revive the levies using different trade laws. They implemented a 10% across-the-board tariff, which the Court of International Trade held illegal on Thursday. But the White House is using another strategy, which descends through the fjords of Norway and puddles of Bangladeshi cement into economic absurdity.
In mid-March, the administration announced it would investigate 16 economies under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, which allows Washington to impose tariffs on countries with policies that burden or restrict U.S. commerce.
The targets of this probe, from giants like China and the European Union to little Norway, stand accused of “structural excess capacity.” The phrase isn’t something economic literature explains, but U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer’s office describes it essentially as countries’ producing more manufactured goods than they reasonably ought to. The administration uses the concept to claim that two normal features of economies, including America’s, are predatory.
