Under President Trump, the tariffs keep on changing.<\/p>\n
The latest shift arrived this week after a federal trade court ruled that the current centerpiece of his trade strategy \u2014 a 10 percent tax on most imports from around the world \u2014 exceeded the president\u2019s authority<\/a> under the law.<\/p>\n For now, that across-the-board duty remains in place, with an appeal getting underway<\/a>. Still, the legal battle, which is far from finished, adds to the uncertainty that has plagued businesses and consumers throughout Mr. Trump\u2019s global trade war.<\/p>\n Sorting out the tariffs that currently apply (or don\u2019t) generally has boiled down to tracking the status of a handful of high-stakes lawsuits.<\/p>\n Many of the president\u2019s tariffs \u2014 the sky-high rates that he first imposed on what became known as \u201cLiberation Day\u201d last year \u2014 were struck down by the Supreme Court<\/a> in February. The administration has begun the work to refund the money collected under those duties<\/a>, which totals around $166 billion, and the first checks are expected to arrive as soon as Monday.<\/p>\n This bucket of tariffs includes the country-by-country rates that Mr. Trump first announced to combat the illicit sale of drugs, as well as those he imposed on a \u201creciprocal\u201d basis in response to what he described as persistent trade imbalances.<\/p>\n Other tariffs applied by Mr. Trump are more legally settled, yet have shifted up or down with some frequency as the White House has sought to accomplish its economic goals \u2014 or lessen the consequences of the president\u2019s policies. These include the tariffs that the president applied to products like cars and steel on national security grounds, using a legal provision known as Section 232.<\/p>\n