BBC: US President Donald Trump has said that he will impose global tariffs of 15%, as he continued to rail against a Supreme Court ruling that struck down his previous import taxes.
Trump said on Friday that he would replace the tariffs scrapped by the court with a 10% levy on all goods coming into the US.
But on Saturday, he announced on Truth Social that this would be increased to the maximum allowed under a never-used trade law.
That law allows these new tariffs to stay in place for around five months before the administration must seek congressional approval.
The 10% tariffs were set to come into force on Tuesday, 24 February. It’s unclear if the increased 15% would also be imposed starting then. The BBC has contacted the White House.
The new 15% tax rate – a temporary solution under Section 122 of the 1974 Trade Act – raises questions for countries such as the UK and Australia, which had agreed a 10% tariff deal with the US.
Trump said his administration had reached the decision to raise the levy following a review of the Supreme Court’s “ridiculous, poorly written, and extraordinarily anti-American decision on Tariffs issued yesterday”.
In a 6-3 decision, justices on the highest US court found that the president had overstepped his powers when he introduced sweeping global tariffs last year using a 1977 law known as the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA).
The US has already collected at least $130bn in tariffs using IEEPA, according to the most recent government data.
Immediately following the ruling, Trump said that he was “ashamed of certain members of the court” and called the justices who rejected his trade policy “fools”.
The ruling to strike down the tariffs was decided by the court’s three liberal justices, Chief Justice John Roberts, a conservative nominated by George W Bush and two justices nominated by Trump: Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch.
Three conservative justices, Clarence Thomas, Brett Kavanaugh and Samuel Alito, dissented.
