A single trade act allows a president to reshape global supply chains
A powerful provision in the 1974 Trade Act grants the U.S. President the authority to unilaterally impose massive tariffs and fundamentally reorganize how goods move across the globe.
Section 301 of the 1974 Trade Act is a potent tool of economic statecraft that allows for tariffs of up to 100% on foreign goods. First utilized against Japanese semiconductors in 1979, it has since been used to target hundreds of billions of dollars in imports. These actions often trigger massive shifts in manufacturing, such as the recent export boom in Vietnam as companies move away from traditional hubs.
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