Trump Invokes 1930 Section 338 to Impose 50 % Tariff on $20 B Canadian Imports

Trump’s maneuver echoes the original Smoot-Hawley tariff wave of 1930–1931, whose tit-for-tat reprisals deepened the Great Depression, and recalls Richard Nixon’s 10 % “import surcharge” of 1971 that pressured trading partners during a balance-of-payments crunch. The episode fits a 21st-century trend toward executive-driven, ad-hoc protectionism and the sidelining of multilateral rules (WTO stasis, USMCA friction, Brexit, U.S.–China decoupling). By dusting off a century-old statute after the Supreme Court curbed his emergency-powers tariffs, the White House signals a readiness to weaponize any dormant authority, accelerating the erosion of predictability that post-1945 trade architecture sought to secure. Over a hundred-year arc, this could mark either a brief election-year gambit—undone by future courts or Congress—or a milestone in the slow retreat from rules-based North American integration toward transactional nationalism, with supply chains re-routing and regional blocs hardening, much as pre-WWII autarkic blocs once did.