SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Last week, the Trump administration announced a new round of tariffs covering more than 80 countries, virtually all imports entering the United States. The administration says these countries have not done enough to enforce bans on goods that are produced by forced labor. But just hours after this announcement, two small businesses challenged the tariffs in court. One of them is Burlap & Barrel, the New York spice retailer that successfully challenged a previous set of tariffs at the Supreme Court. Scott Lincicome is the vice president of general economics and trade at the Cato Institute, and he joins us now. Thanks for being with us.
SCOTT LINCICOME: My pleasure.
SIMON: How steep are these tariffs?
LINCICOME: In one sense, the tariffs are historically steep. You're setting tariffs at around 10- to 12.5%, which is a radical increase from where the United States had sat before 2025. In another sense, though, the tariffs are basically the same they were a couple weeks ago when another set of tariffs was in place and then just expired. So as an economic matter, big historical increase, but relatively modest change.
SIMON: What do you make of the administration's argument that this was necessary to reduce forced labor?
LINCICOME: Yeah. I'm extremely skeptical for several reasons. The first is if you actually read the report that the government issued, it is extremely light on actual evidence. It makes no connection between the allegation of forced labor enforcement in these various countries and any harm to the United States, which is the legal requirement for imposing tariffs.
It also doesn't explain how these tariffs will achieve the end to these forced labor problems, nor does it justify why good actor developed countries like, say, Norway are getting the same tariff rate as countries that have serious forced labor issues such as Kazakhstan. You put it all together, combined with the fact that the administration has been for months promising that they would have these tariffs in place at around these levels, and I think it gives us a lot of reason to doubt that this is really about forced labor instead of just restoring the president's tariff wall.
SIMON: But forced labor is a problem, isn't it? I mean, shouldn't the U.S. be taking steps to try and push trading partners to end forced labor?
LINCICOME: Well, forced labor is an issue, but the reality is that the United States has had a ban on imports made with forced labor since 1930. The United States has actually been a somewhat weak enforcer of that law over the last several decades. The Trump administration has been a lighter enforcer than the Biden administration was. So I think we can all agree that attacking imports made with forced labor is a worthwhile cause. The question is simply whether the administration really has good intentions here and whether these tariffs are actually going to achieve any improvement in forced labor conditions around the world.
SIMON: As we mentioned, the Supreme Court already struck down a previous set of tariffs that relied on a different legal authority. Do you think these tariffs will survive?
LINCICOME: I think it's an open legal question. These tariffs are fundamentally different from the ones that the Supreme Court struck down because in that case, the court simply had to decide whether the law allows any tariffs at all to be imposed by any president. This time around, the law at issue - Section 301 - clearly allows for the use of tariffs by the executive branch. So that forces the court to question the grounds for imposing those tariffs and the analysis conducted, and courts don't really like to do that. They're very deferential to the executive branch and these types of determinations. So I think that there is a case here because the report and the findings are so weak, but it's not nearly as much of a slam dunk as the emergency tariffs were last winter.
SIMON: So you're worried about a precedent that could be set?
LINCICOME: Certainly, because I think one of the real issues here is if you look at how light this report was, if you look at how this analysis conducted, it could effectively turn any issue into a blank check for the president to write tariffs, and tariffs are the constitutional authority of Congress. So the question becomes, if the president can do this, he can really impose tariffs for any reason and effectively take over Congress' tariff powers.
SIMON: Scott Lincicome is vice president of general economics and trade at the Cato Institute. Thank you so much for being with us.
LINCICOME: My pleasure. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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