Tag: U.S. trade law

In early 2025, President Donald Trump reasserted his "America First" trade agenda, initiating a series of aggressive tariff measures aimed at addressing longstanding trade deficits and promoting domestic manufacturing. These policies, characterized by substantial tariffs on imports from key trading partners, have led to significant market volatility and raised complex legal questions regarding the extent of executive power in trade matters.

U.S.-China Tariff Reduction: On May 12, 2025, the United States and China announced a significant, albeit temporary, reduction in tariffs, marking a notable de-escalation in their ongoing trade conflict. The agreement entails the U.S. lowering tariffs on Chinese goods from 145% to 30%, while China reduces its tariffs on U.S. goods from 125% to 10%, effective for a 90-day period starting May 14, 2025 . This development follows a series of tit-for-tat tariff increases that have strained bilateral relations and disrupted global supply chains.

In the first quarter of 2025, the United States economy shrank by 0.3%—its most pronounced contraction in nearly three years. Although modest in numeric terms, the political and economic reverberations were immediate and significant. The timing of this downturn has drawn particular scrutiny due to its coincidence with a sweeping suite of trade protectionist measures reintroduced by President Donald J. Trump during the opening months of his second term in office. Central to these measures was the reimplementation—and, in some cases, President Trump's 2025 Tariff Policies regimes targeting a wide array of imported goods from traditional economic rivals such as China, Mexico, and the European Union. The administration’s stated rationale was straightforward: to protect American industry, reassert economic sovereignty, and correct what it characterized as long-standing structural imbalances in the global trading system.

On April 30, 2025, Reuters reported that the U.S. economy had contracted in the first quarter of the year, marking the first such decline since the COVID-19 pandemic era. The contraction, clocking in at an annualized 0.3%, came amid President Donald Trump’s renewed trade-focused economic policy, specifically a resurgence of tariff impositions on foreign imports. Occurring within his first 100 days of a historic non-consecutive second term, Trump’s aggressive return to protectionist trade tactics reflects broader legal and policy challenges in modern U.S. governance.