Trump Administration Opens Section 301 Excess-Capacity Probe Into 16 Economies After Court Nixes Tariff Program

Section 301 was the same club the Reagan administration wielded against Japanese semiconductors in 1987 and that Trump first used against China in 2017–18; each time it signalled a shift from multilateral WTO dispute settlement toward unilateral pressure. This episode revives that pattern just weeks after the Supreme Court’s rare rebuke of executive tariff powers, echoing the 1935 Schechter ‘sick-chicken’ case that clipped New Deal trade authority. Long-term, the probe sits at the confluence of two megatrends: (1) the slow unraveling of the post-1995 rules-based trading order as major economies normalise industrial policy and (2) the restructuring of supply chains away from a China-centric model. Whether the investigation actually produces lasting tariffs or merely temporary leverage, it accelerates the century-long oscillation between liberalisation (1947 GATT, 1994 WTO) and protectionist retrenchment (1930 Smoot-Hawley, 1971 Nixon surcharge). On a 100-year horizon, such swings tend to be absorbed by technological and demographic forces, but each cycle leaves scar tissue—institutional erosion, tit-for-tat retaliation—that nudges the system toward fragmentation unless a new consensus, akin to the 1947 GATT compromise, eventually emerges.