COLUMN: Trump's Trade War — A 150-Day Clock, and Then the Supreme Court?

The day the Supreme Court blew up the tariff plan

June 26, 2026 will go down in the annals of American international trade. That day, the United States Supreme Court struck down the Trump administration's "reciprocal" tariffs, which imposed individualized customs duties on nearly every country on the planet. The Court found that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act — IEEPA — did not authorize the executive to unilaterally impose such sweeping tariffs. It was a major legal setback for a trade strategy built on the idea that the American president could decide everything by executive order.

Donald Trump's response? Immediate, predictable, and perfectly within his register: within hours of the judicial decision, he announced the signing of an executive order imposing a global 10% tariff on all American imports, this time based on Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974. In doing so, he placed his trade arsenal on a different legal footing — but one with a crucial constraint: tariffs created under Section 122 can only last 150 days. Any extension requires Congressional approval.

One hundred and fifty days: a clock for the entire global trading system

The clock is now ticking. One hundred and fifty days from June 26, 2026 — around November 23, 2026 — the global 10% tariff will automatically expire unless Trump obtains Congressional approval to extend it, which appears uncertain given Republican divisions on the trade question. For America's trading partners, for businesses that have restructured their supply chains, and for the global trading system built over decades of multilateral negotiations, these 150 days represent a period of intense uncertainty and accelerated negotiations.

Trump has never wanted to be predictable on trade — that is his doctrine. Unpredictability is his negotiating lever. But there is a difference between calculated unpredictability that forces partners to the table and the legal chaos that paralyzes investments and breaks supply chains. I am not sure Trump himself always knows where the line is.

What the law permits and what it forbids

Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 was designed for balance-of-payments emergency situations. It authorizes the president to temporarily impose tariff surcharges on imports — but with a ceiling of 15% ad valorem and a maximum duration of 150 days without Congressional approval. This is precisely the more restrictive but legally less contestable framework that Trump chose to invoke after the Supreme Court invalidated his reciprocal tariffs.

The immediate legal question is whether American federal courts will accept this new tariff architecture, or whether new legal challenges will enjoy the same success as those that struck down the IEEPA tariffs. American and foreign trade lawyers are currently working through that question. The answer will determine whether Trump has a stable legal foundation for his trade policy for the next 150 days — or whether another judicial thunderbolt will disrupt the picture.

The threat of 100% tariffs on digital taxes

Alongside the global tariff, Trump posted on Truth Social an explicit threat: imposing a 100% tariff on products from any country imposing a digital services tax on American companies. The implicit target is clear: "many European countries," in his own words. France, the United Kingdom, Italy, Spain, and others have at various points proposed or implemented digital taxes targeting American tech giants like Google, Apple, Amazon, and Meta. Trump already forced Canada to back down in 2025 — Ottawa canceled its own digital tax project after American threats of trade retaliation.

The digital tax is a legitimate issue. Large American platforms capture enormous revenues in European economies while paying minimal taxes through aggressive fiscal structures. European countries have a sovereign right to tax economic activity on their territory. Trump is turning this legitimate fiscal policy debate into a trade weapon. That is an abuse of power, not commercial negotiation.

Europe: between rhetorical resistance and structural dependence

The European Union is America's largest trading partner. A 10% tariff on all European exports to the United States represents a significant economic shock for sectors like German automobiles, French luxury goods, aerospace, pharmaceuticals, and agri-food. The European Commission had already prepared lists of American products subject to retaliation — but deploying those lists would plunge both economies into a full-scale trade war with considerable economic costs on both sides.

The European position is structurally difficult: the United States remains Europe's principal security ally against Russia, the leading partner in supporting Ukraine, and an irreplaceable export market. Launching trade reprisals against Washington in this context amounts to damaging a relationship on which European security depends. Trump knows this — and exploits that asymmetry.

Asia: Japan, South Korea, and the Korean dilemma

For Japan and South Korea, which had both negotiated bilateral trade agreements with Washington, the volatility of American trade policy is particularly destabilizing. These countries have invested massively in the United States — notably in semiconductor production (TSMC in Arizona, Samsung in Texas) precisely in response to American pressure. They now find themselves exposed to tariffs that affect their traditional exports despite those concessions. The CHIPS Act and its incentives for domestic production risk contradiction from tariff policies that discourage foreign investment.

The schizophrenia of American trade policy under Trump reaches new heights: inviting foreign companies to invest in the United States to create American jobs, while imposing tariffs on their exports of origin. A partner who plays that game eventually stops investing. American short-termism risks being very costly in the long run.

150 days: too short for serious negotiations

The 150-day deadline imposed by Section 122 creates a time pressure that may seem useful for forcing rapid negotiations — but is in reality counterproductive for durable agreements. Serious bilateral trade agreements typically take several years to negotiate — experts estimate a minimum US-EU agreement would take two to three years even on an accelerated track. The 150 days only permit statements of principle, declarations of intent, and at best a freeze on the most contentious measures.

What Trump can realistically achieve within this window is a series of bilateral announcements of "progress in negotiations" that will politically allow him to justify an extension or reformulation of the tariffs. The strategy is as rhetorical as it is substantive: creating the appearance of diplomatic momentum while maintaining economic pressure. It is a well-tested technique from Trump's first term — announcements of "great deals" that often prove less substantial than promised.

Congress as an unpredictable wild card

The need for Congressional approval to extend tariffs beyond 150 days introduces a variable Trump controls poorly. The Republican Party is divided on international trade: senators from agricultural export states like Iowa, Nebraska, and Kansas know that foreign trade reprisals hit their constituents directly — as during the US-China trade war of 2018–2019, which required billions in agricultural subsidies to offset American farmers' losses. A bipartisan coalition to block tariff extension is not impossible.

Congress as a brake on commercial unilateralism — that is precisely why the Founding Fathers assigned international trade to the legislature rather than the executive. The Supreme Court just reaffirmed that logic. Trump has been trying to circumvent this constitutional constraint since his first term. The Constitution is still holding — but for how long?

What businesses do in the face of instability

Multinational corporations cannot plan ten-year investments based on a tariff that can change within 150 days. Since the announcement of the global 10% tariff, market analysts have observed supply chain adjustments, deferred investment decisions, and a trend toward relocation of activities to zones not exposed to American tariffs. Mexico, with the USMCA agreement, and Vietnam, with its particular trade preferences, have benefited from supply chain diversion during previous tariff episodes.

For American consumers, tariffs translate directly into price increases. The 10% of Section 122 will stack on top of existing tariffs on many products, raising the cost of imported goods — electronics, clothing, industrial equipment. Some economists estimate that the inflationary impact of this new tariff layer represents the equivalent of a tax increase of $1,200 to $1,500 per American household per year.

The dollar and its reserve currency status

A dimension rarely evoked in tariff debates is the impact of American trade policy on the dollar's status as the international reserve currency. Trading partners faced with unpredictable tariffs have more reason to diversify their reserves and transactions away from the dollar. China, Russia, and several BRICS countries have actively been working to reduce their dollar dependence for several years. American trade volatility accelerates that trend — with long-term consequences for financing the American deficit.

The dollar as reserve currency is one of the greatest sources of American economic power — it allows Washington to borrow at preferential rates and finance considerable deficits. If Trump's chaotic trade policy were to progressively erode that position, the economic cost would far exceed the benefits of the tariffs. That is the calculation that no one around Trump seems willing to make.

Agriculture: the sacrificed sector since 2018

Since the US-China trade war of 2018–2019, American agriculture has been the first sector sacrificed in foreign reprisals against Washington's tariffs. China had responded to Trump's tariffs with surcharges on soybeans, pork, corn, and other American agricultural products, costing American farmers billions of dollars compensated artificially through emergency federal subsidies. The same dynamic could repeat with the Section 122 tariffs of 2026.

Agricultural states like Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, and Nebraska export massively to markets that could decide on targeted reprisals against American agricultural products. These states are politically pivotal for the Republican Party — creating a tension between the industrial interests that benefit from tariff protection and the agricultural interests that pay the political price. Trump balanced that tension in 2018–2019 by releasing subsidies — a politically costly solution that Congress would need to approve again.

It is striking that the primary victims of Trump's tariff policy are often the farmers who constitute his most loyal electoral base. It is a political irony that neither Trump nor his advisors ever seem willing to confront directly. Compensation subsidies are a stopgap, not a solution.

Semiconductors and technology: the other tariff front

The semiconductor sector sits at the heart of another tariff dimension. Chips produced in Asia — notably by TSMC in Taiwan, Samsung in South Korea, and other manufacturers — enter the production of virtually every piece of American electronic equipment, from smartphones to cars to military hardware. 10% tariffs on these imports raise American production costs and reduce the international competitiveness of products that depend on them.

That tension is all the more significant because the United States has invested massively in relocating semiconductor manufacturing through the CHIPS Act. The new TSMC plant in Arizona and Samsung's facility in Texas were funded in part by federal subsidies precisely to reduce that dependence. Simultaneously imposing tariffs on chip imports and asking foreign companies to invest in the United States creates a policy incoherence that the CEOs of those companies have carefully noted.

Scenario 1: Congress blocks, Trump improvises again

If Congress refuses to extend the Section 122 tariffs, Trump will find himself in a difficult position. Without a solid legal basis for new blanket tariffs — Section 232 (national security) allows tariffs on specific products like steel and aluminum but not blanket tariffs — the administration will have to either negotiate substantive bilateral deals, or invent a new legal justification. This scenario is politically humiliating but economically less disruptive for American trading partners.

Scenario 2: Congress approves, a new unstable normal

If Congress approves the extension, the 10% tariffs become a lasting new reality for global trade. Trading partners will adapt, supply chains will restructure, and the economic cost will be gradually absorbed — but diplomatic tensions will remain high. This scenario is most likely if Trump maintains sufficient political pressure on Congressional Republicans.

Scenario 3: bilateral negotiations produce selective exemptions

The most interesting scenario for the European Union and Asian allies would be a series of bilateral negotiations producing sectoral exemptions or framework agreements allowing certain countries to partly escape the tariffs. Trump has historically preferred bilateral agreements to multilateral structures — the USMCA is the most successful example. If Washington can announce a series of bilateral "victories" within 150 days, the global tariff becomes politically less necessary.

I personally lean toward a hybrid of scenarios two and three — tariffs partially extended, exemptions negotiated case by case, and a rhetoric of American commercial victory built on symbolic concessions from partners pressured to exit the uncertainty. That is not coherent trade policy — it is perpetual crisis management dressed up as doctrine.

An international organization reduced to impotence

The World Trade Organization (WTO) was founded on the principle that trade disputes must be resolved through multilateral rule-based mechanisms. Since his first term, Trump has systematically circumvented or ignored these mechanisms — blocking nominations to the WTO Appellate Body, invoking national security provisions to justify steel and aluminum tariffs, and now imposing blanket tariffs after having his IEEPA tariffs struck down by the Supreme Court.

The US Supreme Court's decisions invalidated the tariffs based on American law — not on WTO rules. American law and international trade law therefore diverge in their treatment of Trump's tariff policy. This divergence means that even if Washington complies with its own courts' decisions, it may still violate its international commitments to the WTO. The credibility of the multilateral international trading system suffers chronically as a result.

The WTO is in a state of clinical death that no one has been willing to certify. It still formally exists, negotiations continue, trade statistics are published — but its capacity to constrain the behavior of great powers is close to zero. That is a collective failure of global governance that neither Europe nor the United States can afford to ignore indefinitely.

What trading partners must do now

In this context, America's trading partners — primarily the European Union, Japan, South Korea, and Canada — must simultaneously maintain dialogue channels with Washington to negotiate exemptions, strengthen their trade cooperation among themselves to reduce dependence on the American market, and prepare targeted retaliation mechanisms that maximize political pressure on the American sectors most influential in Congress.

This multitrack strategy is difficult to coordinate, but it is the only realistic response to a partner whose trade policy is fundamentally unpredictable. The European Commission has developed a "forced reciprocity" instrument that would allow faster and more targeted reprisals. Its activation will depend on the ability of member states to maintain their unity toward Washington — a unity that has sometimes cracked under American pressure in the past.

What Section 122's expiration will really change

In 150 days, around November 23, 2026, Trump's global 10% tariff will expire or be extended by Congress. Either way, the global trading system will have traversed yet another period of turbulence that erodes confidence in the stability of American trade relations. Multilateral organizations — the WTO above all — will once again have observed their powerlessness in the face of great-power unilateralism. And America's trading partners will have drawn lessons from this new chapter of unpredictability.

What the 150 days reveal about American strategy

What emerges with clarity from the episode of June 26, 2026 is that the Trump administration has no coherent long-term trade doctrine — it has a tactic of permanent pressure, a negotiation-by-coercion instinct, and a remarkable capacity to improvise legal bases when its initial tools are invalidated. That may be effective for extracting one-off concessions. It is catastrophic for building lasting trade relationships based on trust and reciprocity.

In 150 days, this column will have aged. Facts will have evolved. Some of my scenarios will have materialized, others not. What I can guarantee is that the stakes — the credibility of the global trading system, the economic stability of our partnerships — will still be current. 150 days pass fast. The consequences last longer.

By Maxime Marquette, columnist

Editorial stance

I am not a journalist but a columnist and analyst. My expertise lies in observing and analysing the geopolitical, economic and strategic dynamics that shape our world. My work is to take political strategies apart, to understand global economic movements, to put the decisions of international actors in context and to offer analytical perspectives on the changes that are redefining our societies.

I do not claim the cold objectivity of traditional journalism, which stops at reporting facts. I claim analytical clarity, rigorous interpretation and a deep understanding of the complex issues that concern us all. My role is to give meaning to the facts, to place them in their historical and strategic context, and to offer a critical reading of events.

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