# Trump Rebuilds His Tariff Wall, Brick by Brick

An episode of [Big Take](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1578096201), 27 Jul 2026, 17 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/tracking.swap.fm/track/UVBrz8bN8aM2Xe47PEPu/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/825d4e29-b616-46f4-afd7-ae2b0013005c/35bf4e75-7261-4b59-8028-b494012c7ea6/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=8b1dd624-a026-43e9-8b57-ae2b00130066

As President Trump paused strikes on Iran over the weekend, he ratcheted up pressure on another front: his renewed trade war. On Friday, the US president imposed levies of 10 or 12.5% on 60 economies, the first in many steps to rebuild the tariff wall destroyed when the Supreme Court overturned Trump’s IEEPA tariffs in February. On today’s Big Take podcast, Bloomberg’s global trade editor Brendan Murray sits down with host David Gura to break down the latest tariffs, what they reveal about the administration’s new strategy and whether they’ll hold up in court. Read more: • Trump Rebuilds Tariffs With New Levies on 60 Economies • How Trump’s Section 301 Tariffs Are Being Challenged in Court Watch more: US Trade Rep. Greer on China Relations and Section 301 Tariffs We have a special Bloomberg subscription offer for podcast listeners at Bloomberg.com/podcastoffer. Hosted by David Gura; Produced by Julia Press and Rachael Lewis-Krisky; Reported by Brendan Murray; Edited by Nicole Beemsterboer. Fact-checking by Rachael Lewis-Krisky; Engineering by Emma Munger. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:02] Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
[0:09] Speaker 2: The war with Iran is at an inflection point. That's
[0:12] Speaker 2: according to Bloomberg Economics. President Trump is considering his next steps,
[0:17] Speaker 2: and over the weekend there was a pause in strikes
[0:20] Speaker 2: by both the US and Iran, but houthy militants aligned
[0:24] Speaker 2: with Iran have fired missiles and drones at Saudi oil facilities,
[0:27] Speaker 2: impacting crude prices. That has added to concern about inflation
[0:32] Speaker 2: ahead of this week's meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee.
[0:35] Speaker 2: In the middle of all this, President Trump decided to
[0:37] Speaker 2: impose a raft of new tariffs after the US Supreme
[0:41] Speaker 2: Court overturned the tariffs the President had put in place
[0:44] Speaker 2: on national security grounds using the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.
[0:49] Speaker 2: Countries all over the world waited to see how Trump
[0:52] Speaker 2: would try to rebuild his tariff wall. First, there was
[0:55] Speaker 2: a temporary measure, a short term ten percent global tariff
[0:59] Speaker 2: that expired last week. Well that was in place. The
[1:02] Speaker 2: Trump administration put the finishing touches on another policy it
[1:06] Speaker 2: hopes will be more permanent.
[1:08] Speaker 3: So Section three zher one allows the US Trade Representative,
[1:12] Speaker 3: after an investigation into certain unfair trade practices, to imposed
[1:17] Speaker 3: tariffs based on a number of different reasons.
[1:20] Speaker 2: That's Brendan Murray, who's Bloomberg's Global Trade editor. Section three
[1:24] Speaker 2: oh one is part of the Trade Act of nineteen
[1:27] Speaker 2: seventy four.
[1:28] Speaker 3: Essentially, if American companies American workers are being disadvantaged in
[1:33] Speaker 3: any way from competition overseas, this allows the government to
[1:39] Speaker 3: legally justify tariffs against certain countries' imports. And that's what
[1:44] Speaker 3: we've seen here.
[1:45] Speaker 2: Countries from Australia to Switzerland have expressed their disappointment and
[1:49] Speaker 2: they've denied what the US is alleged, that they haven't
[1:52] Speaker 2: done enough to keep forced labor out of their supply chains.
[1:56] Speaker 2: These new tariffs want into effect on Friday at midnight
[1:59] Speaker 2: New York Times, and now companies and countries are trying
[2:03] Speaker 2: to make sense of them, and lawyers are considering court
[2:06] Speaker 2: challenges that will determine whether the policy sticks. I'm David
[2:13] Speaker 2: Gerret and this is the Big Take from Bloomberg News Today.
[2:16] Speaker 2: On the show, Bloomberg's Brendan Murray breaks down the latest
[2:19] Speaker 2: levies imposed by the Trump administration, how they came, about
[2:23] Speaker 2: who they impact, and what they reveal about the administration's
[2:26] Speaker 2: approach to trade in announcing these tariffs. Jamison Greer, the
[2:32] Speaker 2: US Trade representative, said in a statement, the United States
[2:36] Speaker 2: has had a forced labor import ban for nearly a
[2:38] Speaker 2: century and rigorously enforces it. It's well past time, he said,
[2:43] Speaker 2: for our trading partners to do the same. Brendan, what
[2:46] Speaker 2: do we know about the rigor of these investigations if
[2:49] Speaker 2: the Administration's claims against these countries are in fact founded.
[2:52] Speaker 3: So what we're going to see over the coming weeks
[2:54] Speaker 3: is a lot of legal debate about whether these are
[2:57] Speaker 3: justified or not. American importers are going to ask themselves,
[3:01] Speaker 3: why am I paying a duty based on forced labor
[3:04] Speaker 3: from the products that I'm importing from Switzerland? Probably as
[3:08] Speaker 3: far from forced labor as you might think a country
[3:11] Speaker 3: could be. That's because the Administration has judged that countries,
[3:17] Speaker 3: including Switzerland and Canada and many in Asia, have not
[3:22] Speaker 3: enforced their forced labor rules and regulations adequately enough, or
[3:27] Speaker 3: they don't have the rules on the books at all.
[3:29] Speaker 3: So what we're seeing is the administration say, look, we're
[3:34] Speaker 3: just trying to level a playing field for American workers. Now,
[3:38] Speaker 3: there are arguments that this won't hold up in court
[3:41] Speaker 3: as well. Some people point to the fact that and
[3:45] Speaker 3: the apparel industry would raise these issues too. There are
[3:49] Speaker 3: Americans in prison who are producing goods that are bought
[3:53] Speaker 3: in the marketplace, and doesn't that qualify as forced labor
[3:57] Speaker 3: for people who work and get paid fifty cents an
[4:00] Speaker 3: hour or nothing at all. So there's going to be
[4:02] Speaker 3: a lot of finger pointing, But ultimately the question is
[4:06] Speaker 3: going to come down to how can you justify these
[4:10] Speaker 3: tariffs on so many countries, paint them all with the
[4:14] Speaker 3: same brush, and impose a tariff of ten to twelve
[4:17] Speaker 3: and a half percent on them.
[4:19] Speaker 2: How strongly are they making the case here that this
[4:21] Speaker 2: is about human rights? I drew the connection between those
[4:23] Speaker 2: ABA tariffs being struck down and they having to kind
[4:26] Speaker 2: of scramble to find some other means by which they
[4:28] Speaker 2: could put these tariffs in place. Are they pushing back
[4:32] Speaker 2: against the notion that they were looking for another means
[4:35] Speaker 2: of doing this, or are they saying this really is about
[4:36] Speaker 2: human rights? How are they making that claim in this release.
[4:40] Speaker 3: Yeah, that's one of the main criticisms that the administration
[4:44] Speaker 3: has already heard, that this is just a pretext to
[4:47] Speaker 3: collect money and to pad the treasury revenue. You know,
[4:51] Speaker 3: it's kind of hard to argue against crackdowns on forced labor.
[4:55] Speaker 3: No one wants to see that. But whether you can
[4:57] Speaker 3: justify tariffs based in such a broad way is a
[5:01] Speaker 3: whole other issue that the lawyers are going to try
[5:04] Speaker 3: to figure out. And you know, the President and his
[5:07] Speaker 3: advisors now say that they are trying to follow the
[5:10] Speaker 3: letter of the law to take these procedures. There were
[5:13] Speaker 3: public hearings on these forced labor tariffs. Governments came to
[5:17] Speaker 3: the table and said, hey, look at what we're doing.
[5:20] Speaker 3: And so there's a lot of documentation about whether the
[5:24] Speaker 3: countries are abiding by their forced labor rules and not.
[5:28] Speaker 3: And so we're going to see a lot of that
[5:30] Speaker 3: sort of aired as countries try to push back against this.
[5:34] Speaker 2: How does it break down by country? How do you
[5:36] Speaker 2: differentiate sort of who gets a higher tariff than another.
[5:39] Speaker 3: It depends on a couple of things. Number one, do
[5:41] Speaker 3: you already have a trade deal with the administration? And
[5:45] Speaker 3: the US Trade Representative Jamison Greer has told Congress the
[5:47] Speaker 3: other day that he has nineteen of these And so
[5:51] Speaker 3: if you negotiated the other country negotiated a ten percent cap,
[5:56] Speaker 3: then that's basically you're in the ten percent bucket. Countries
[5:59] Speaker 3: with more to prove, with less evidence to defend against
[6:03] Speaker 3: the US's accusations wound up with twelve and a half percent.
[6:07] Speaker 3: So some countries India was among them, moved from a
[6:11] Speaker 3: proposed twelve and a half percent to the ten percent
[6:14] Speaker 3: basket between the time of the proposal in early June
[6:17] Speaker 3: and the announcement that we just got.
[6:19] Speaker 2: How about exemptions? Do we see a lot of exemptions
[6:21] Speaker 2: in this decision so far? Are there likely to be
[6:23] Speaker 2: more of them?
[6:24] Speaker 1: Yeah?
[6:24] Speaker 3: I mean, Bloomberg Economics has calculated that this hits about
[6:29] Speaker 3: a trillion dollars worth of US imports, and so that's
[6:33] Speaker 3: roughly a third of all US imports. And so there
[6:36] Speaker 3: are a lot of carve outs energy, food, things that
[6:40] Speaker 3: are subject to other tariff authorities like cars and steel
[6:44] Speaker 3: and aluminum, USMCA, the US Mexico Canada Trade Agreement. Goods
[6:51] Speaker 3: that flow under those terms aren't subject to this. There
[6:55] Speaker 3: are a lot of holes in this tearfall that the
[6:57] Speaker 3: President is reconstructing after his Supreme Court loss, and a
[7:01] Speaker 3: lot of those are meant to address the concerns that
[7:06] Speaker 3: consumers have and that companies have, But that still doesn't
[7:10] Speaker 3: completely explain away that the president from day one of
[7:14] Speaker 3: his first administration and his second administration loves tariffs, thinks
[7:19] Speaker 3: tariffs are the best economic tool at his disposal, and
[7:23] Speaker 3: that hasn't diminished in the least.
[7:25] Speaker 2: Brand the tariffs want into effect just after midnight on Friday,
[7:28] Speaker 2: New York time. How has the market reacted to the
[7:31] Speaker 2: imposition of these tariffs.
[7:32] Speaker 3: The market is kind of shrugging this off so far.
[7:35] Speaker 3: We'll have to wait and see how it plays out,
[7:37] Speaker 3: but the market seems to be absorbing this as this
[7:41] Speaker 3: is just a continuation of a roughly ten percent tariff.
[7:44] Speaker 3: The Bloomberg Economics estimate of the average US tariff rate
[7:49] Speaker 3: now went from ten point six percent to ten point
[7:52] Speaker 3: seven percent, so not really much more than a blip
[7:56] Speaker 3: in the overall kind of economic impact. But it's something
[7:59] Speaker 3: that we see as really just the first a first step,
[8:04] Speaker 3: rather than the end of the game. This is the
[8:07] Speaker 3: administration trying to piece back together some protectionism around the
[8:12] Speaker 3: industries that it's trying to revitalize.
[8:15] Speaker 2: Coming up, we discussed the legal challenges the administration faces
[8:19] Speaker 2: and what this latest round of tariff says about the
[8:21] Speaker 2: administration strategy going forward. I spoke with Jamison Greer, the
[8:32] Speaker 2: US Trade Representative, in mid July on Bloomberg TV, and
[8:34] Speaker 2: he walked me through the process that ultimately led to
[8:36] Speaker 2: the imposition of Section three to one tariffs on Brazil,
[8:39] Speaker 2: and I think that was seen as kind of a
[8:41] Speaker 2: test case for these new tariffs that we've seen on
[8:44] Speaker 2: other trading partners.
[8:45] Speaker 1: So our Section three oh one investigations, they are legal investigations.
[8:49] Speaker 1: We have two sets of hearings, we do two sets
[8:52] Speaker 1: of public comments, and we're focused on unfair trading practices
[8:56] Speaker 1: by Brazil, so we have to have a legal basis
[8:58] Speaker 1: to do this.
[8:58] Speaker 2: It does seem somewhat represent brendan of a more kind
[9:01] Speaker 2: of measured and deliberate approach to tariff policy this time around.
[9:04] Speaker 2: It I'm curious or of what we know about what
[9:07] Speaker 2: went into this, broadly, how the administration decided which countries
[9:11] Speaker 2: to target, what justifications to use, and more broadly than
[9:14] Speaker 2: that's what kind of tariffs are going to have the
[9:16] Speaker 2: highest likelihood of standing up in court.
[9:18] Speaker 3: The administration would say that their number one priority is
[9:22] Speaker 3: to reduce the trade imbalances that exist around the world
[9:26] Speaker 3: and in places where American farmers and American manufacturers face
[9:31] Speaker 3: an unlevel playing field. They're trying to fix that situation,
[9:35] Speaker 3: and they're trying to open up markets in other places
[9:38] Speaker 3: for US exporters to sell what they make. And so
[9:42] Speaker 3: these latest authorities that they're using are really designed to
[9:47] Speaker 3: piece by piece re establish what the President tried to
[9:51] Speaker 3: do last year with his so called reciprocal tariffs, where
[9:55] Speaker 3: he just kind of imposed them at will. And so
[9:58] Speaker 3: what we're seeing now is a more flexible and durable
[10:04] Speaker 3: in court method and a lot of people say, look,
[10:07] Speaker 3: there's no going back from these. These are not going
[10:10] Speaker 3: to come off if a Democrat wins the White House
[10:13] Speaker 3: next or pro free trade Republican wins the White House
[10:16] Speaker 3: next in the next election. So these tariffs, for the
[10:19] Speaker 3: most part, economists would say, aren't going anywhere.
[10:23] Speaker 2: Are we likely to see legal challenges to these Section
[10:26] Speaker 2: three oh one tariffs and indication of that from the
[10:29] Speaker 2: reception they've gotten.
[10:29] Speaker 3: So far, Well, it was only a couple hours after
[10:32] Speaker 3: these tariffs took effect that two small businesses filed a
[10:36] Speaker 3: lawsuit in the US Court of International Trade accusing the
[10:40] Speaker 3: Trump administration of misusing its tariff authority, again basically saying
[10:44] Speaker 3: that this was too broad a use that the three
[10:47] Speaker 3: to zero one statute is something that should be used
[10:50] Speaker 3: in a more targeted way at countries specifically, rather than
[10:54] Speaker 3: targeting a whole group of countries, like the White House
[10:57] Speaker 3: has done with its latest action. And you know, and
[11:01] Speaker 3: I would imagine that the administration is prepared for that,
[11:03] Speaker 3: and they you know, but they feel like that they've
[11:06] Speaker 3: covered all their bases. Don't forget. There was another trade
[11:10] Speaker 3: headline with the President going after Canada with a never
[11:14] Speaker 3: before used authority three three eight. This one kind of
[11:18] Speaker 3: came out of nowhere and a lot of people had
[11:20] Speaker 3: sort of taken it off our list of potential tools
[11:23] Speaker 3: that he could use. He threatened to put fifty percent
[11:26] Speaker 3: tariffs on Canada in thirty days, and Canada's got to
[11:29] Speaker 3: figure out how how do they come to the table
[11:31] Speaker 3: now and negotiate their way out of that situation, And
[11:34] Speaker 3: so it adds to the uncertainty. Most of the attorneys
[11:39] Speaker 3: who've reacted to those three three eight tariffs threats against
[11:44] Speaker 3: Canada have said that's going to be an interesting to
[11:47] Speaker 3: watch in the courts as well, because number one, it's
[11:50] Speaker 3: never been used before, and number two, it's being used
[11:54] Speaker 3: in a way against a single country that will certainly
[11:58] Speaker 3: hit American importers. Their big question is will that example
[12:04] Speaker 3: of Canada become the new normal for the president when
[12:09] Speaker 3: whether he wants to go after the European Union or
[12:13] Speaker 3: China or any other big trading partner where the US
[12:16] Speaker 3: runs a big deficit.
[12:18] Speaker 2: We've been talking about these investigations to forced labor. There's
[12:22] Speaker 2: another series of investigations under Section three h one centering
[12:25] Speaker 2: on excess capacity. What's the government looking into here?
[12:29] Speaker 3: So this is essentially a government policy that allows factories
[12:34] Speaker 3: to produce too much and ship it around the world
[12:36] Speaker 3: and kind of flood the market.
[12:38] Speaker 2: China notoriously has done this for many years exactly.
[12:41] Speaker 3: So the real focus of the excess capacity case that
[12:45] Speaker 3: you're referring to is China, and so that investigation is ongoing.
[12:50] Speaker 3: Jamison Greer, the US trade representative, has said it's going
[12:55] Speaker 3: to take longer. We don't know if longer means a
[12:57] Speaker 3: couple more weeks or a couple more months. But it's
[13:00] Speaker 3: a lot more complicated than the looking into a forced
[13:03] Speaker 3: labor case. You're talking about trying to understand the supply
[13:09] Speaker 3: chains of lots of industries and how they intersect with
[13:13] Speaker 3: other economies, and there's a real factor there that will
[13:18] Speaker 3: be difficult for the US to get it put its
[13:20] Speaker 3: finger on. And there are capacity problems in the US
[13:24] Speaker 3: Trade Representative's office. They're just you know, that takes a
[13:27] Speaker 3: lot of people. As Jamison Greer said the other day,
[13:29] Speaker 3: he said, I've got dozens and dozens of attorneys working
[13:33] Speaker 3: on this particular case, and in their perspective, it has
[13:36] Speaker 3: to be built on a solid basis, and so sounds
[13:40] Speaker 3: like it's going to take longer. If it takes a
[13:42] Speaker 3: couple of months, then you're kind of bumping up against
[13:44] Speaker 3: the Trump She summit meeting that's supposed to take place
[13:48] Speaker 3: in September. And so do you really want to be
[13:51] Speaker 3: imposing more tariffs on China, you know, ahead of this
[13:55] Speaker 3: big meeting that President Trump wants to have with the
[13:57] Speaker 3: Chinese leader.
[13:59] Speaker 2: Let me ask you last just for your perspective on
[14:02] Speaker 2: how high this tariff wall is, how far along the
[14:04] Speaker 2: job is. So we've got these three oh one tariffs,
[14:08] Speaker 2: sounds like more on the way you mentioned the Section
[14:10] Speaker 2: three three eight tariffs on Canada. Meanwhile, negotiations continue with
[14:15] Speaker 2: all of these other nations separate from this. Where are
[14:18] Speaker 2: we in this process. How close are we to that
[14:21] Speaker 2: wall being being finished.
[14:23] Speaker 3: I sort of feel like we're at the beginning of
[14:25] Speaker 3: the new wall, and that this three ozho one on
[14:28] Speaker 3: forced labor was kind of the foundation that the that
[14:32] Speaker 3: the US Trade Representative's office has laid. Don't forget we're
[14:36] Speaker 3: going to have you know, they are all sorts of
[14:39] Speaker 3: tariffs threatened on pharmaceuticals, all sorts of other kinds of
[14:44] Speaker 3: imports that the that the US administration wants to protect.
[14:50] Speaker 3: President Trump threatened to put tariffs on the European Union
[14:53] Speaker 3: for the fines that it's imposing on Google, almost a
[14:56] Speaker 3: billion dollar fine. President Trump said he was going to
[15:00] Speaker 3: order an immediate investigation under three oh one into this
[15:04] Speaker 3: practice by the European Union. And so this is really
[15:08] Speaker 3: the beginning of the new wall. And what we can
[15:11] Speaker 3: expect is it's going to be bumpy, it's going to
[15:14] Speaker 3: be difficult to predict, and it will bring its own
[15:18] Speaker 3: kind of uncertainty, different from the kind that we experience
[15:22] Speaker 3: when President Trump wielded a stair of authority that the
[15:25] Speaker 3: Supreme Court struck down. This new process promises to be complicated,
[15:30] Speaker 3: may be slow, and it will have holes in it
[15:34] Speaker 3: as well. As inflation kind of rears its head again
[15:38] Speaker 3: with the Iran war dragging on, the administration, by its
[15:42] Speaker 3: own account, wants to keep rolling out tariffs right into
[15:46] Speaker 3: the teeth of the midterm elections. And how's that going
[15:49] Speaker 3: to sit with the American consumer that are paying higher
[15:52] Speaker 3: prices at the pump, at the grocery store, pretty much
[15:56] Speaker 3: everywhere you look. And Democrats really hammered Jamison Greer on
[16:01] Speaker 3: the Hill on those issues, is you know, how can
[16:04] Speaker 3: you do this to my constituents? And the administration had
[16:08] Speaker 3: better have its talking points pretty sharpened for those kinds
[16:12] Speaker 3: of attacks on the political front.
[16:19] Speaker 2: This is The Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm David Gera.
[16:21] Speaker 2: To get more from The Big Take and unlimited access
[16:24] Speaker 2: to all of Bloomberg dot com, subscribe today at Bloomberg
[16:27] Speaker 2: dot com slash podcast offer. If you like this episode,
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[16:35] Speaker 2: Thanks for listening. We'll be back tomorrow.

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