WASHINGTON, July 25 — Fifty percent. That was the maximum tariff cut the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 handed the president — a Cold War cudgel of economic statecraft still on the books and still sparking legal fights. The bottom line: a law born to counter the European Economic Community and Soviet influence now gives the White House near-unilateral power to tax imports in the name of national security, with minimal congressional oversight.
Enacted Oct. 11, 1962, and codified at 19 U.S.C. Chapter 7, the act was designed to maintain U.S. economic influence as the EEC took shape.
The Kennedy administration launched a public-relations campaign framing the law as a national security necessity, and the House received the bill on Aug. 8 of that year. By the numbers: the president could lift or lower tariffs by as much as 50% over five years, eliminate barriers on goods where the United States and the EEC together accounted for at least 80% of the market — agricultural products were exempt — and offer relief through the Escape Clause, loans, tax breaks, or quotas.
The law also created the Tariff Commission and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative.
How Section 232 works
The provision that grabs headlines today is Section 232. It permits the president to impose tariffs if the secretary of commerce determines that imports threaten or impair national security. The figure that matters historically: the section was invoked only twice — once in 1979 and again in 1982 — and then fell dormant for decades.
After the World Trade Organization was created in 1995, Section 232 sat unused until March 8, 2018, when then-President Trump cited it to slap tariffs on steel and aluminum imports. Investors will note that the 1962 act’s stated purpose was to stimulate the U.S. economy by lowering trade barriers while countering Communist economic influence.
The Kennedy Round of General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade negotiations, which concluded June 30, 1967, was the direct institutional sequel — a multilateral tariff-cutting round enabled by the new presidential authority.
A legal flashpoint
Section 232 vests sweeping authority in the president with minimal congressional oversight. That design has made it vulnerable to lawsuits challenging both its constitutionality and its consistency with U.S. obligations under the WTO. One sentence that captures the tension: the same power that let a Cold War president cut tariffs by half now lets a sitting president raise them — and the courts are still sorting out the limits.
By the numbers on legal exposure: the law has faced constitutional challenges on separation-of-powers grounds and WTO disputes over whether national-security tariffs violate trade commitments. As of this writing, the law remains in force.
The administration under President Donald Trump, with Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, inherits a trade tool that has already been battle-tested in courts and at the WTO. What to watch next: whether new Section 232 actions surface in the current term, and how the ongoing lawsuits — some still pending — resolve the constitutional boundaries. The 1962 act, designed for an era of European integration and Communist rivalry, is now a perennial flashpoint in American trade policy.
The punchy takeaway: the Cold War law that gave presidents unprecedented tariff power is not gathering dust — it’s gathering lawsuits.
Sources
- Trump's New Tariffs Expand the Boundaries of Section 232 – Lawfare
- Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 – Congress.gov
