Trump Invokes 1930 Section 338 to Slap 50 % Tariffs on 400+ Canadian Products

Seen against the century-long arc of North American trade, this is a rare throw-back to the beggar-thy-neighbour tariffs of 1930–34, when Smoot-Hawley hikes provoked 25+ nations to retaliate and shrank global trade by an estimated two-thirds. Like Reagan’s 1981 voluntary export restraints on Japanese cars and Trump’s own 2018 steel/aluminium duties, the latest action repurposes antiquated statutes to pursue bilateral leverage, underscoring a post-Cold-War drift from rules-based multilateralism toward discretionary economic coercion. If Section 338 survives court challenges, presidents may view dormant trade laws as ready-made tools, eroding Congress’s tariff authority and the predictability that has underpinned the 1994-2020 NAFTA/USMCA era. A century hence, the episode may be remembered less for its immediate economic hit than for punctuating the unraveling of the post-1947 GATT consensus and normalising tariffs as first-resort foreign-policy weapons between even the closest allies.