The president is expected to impose fresh import taxes this week, as levies from February are only able to remain in effect for 150 days

Trump administration officials are in the process of using other authorities to get close to the "liberation day" tariffs that President Donald Trump rolled out more than a year ago.

In February, President Donald Trump turned to Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 to impose a 10% global tariff for 150 days, with his move coming shortly after the Supreme Court ruled against his use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose his import taxes.

With the 150-day period ending, Trump now looks poised to seize on yet another authority to maintain his tariffs - probably Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974.

The process that's underway is essentially an effort to "find a way to get President Trump his 'liberation day' tariffs," said Mary Lovely, an economist and senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, referring to the proposed levies that were floated on April 2, 2025, and that hammered stocks SPX.

She and other analysts are expecting that the Trump administration will cite a Section 301 investigation that concluded last month to impose tariffs that in large part re-create the Section 122 duties of 10% that expire Friday. In wrapping up that probe, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer recommended tariffs of 10% to 12.5% for 60 trading partners because of their "failure to impose and effectively enforce a prohibition on the importation of goods produced with forced labor."

In an interview on Tuesday, Greer indicated that he's ready to follow through on that recommendation in the near future, saying that it covers 60 partners or 99% of U.S. trade and that it "illustrates the scale of the problem."

"We expect to see some action soon," Greer told CNBC. "I can't really specify a timeline right now. I have a responsibility to brief Congress and other stakeholders before I really reveal that kind of thing, but we do expect action soon on that." He is due to appear before the Senate Finance Committee on Wednesday.

Lovely and other analysts don't buy the argument that the upcoming tariffs are a necessary move to combat the problem of forced labor.

"It really smacks, particularly to our allies, as just a pretext," she said.

How markets may react

So how might markets respond to a big trade action later this week? It may not shake markets all that much, according to Jennifer Hillman, who served as general counsel for the U.S. trade representative during the Clinton administration and is now a professor at Georgetown University's law school.

"There's a lot of reason to sort of take this with a bit of a cautionary note, a bit of a grain of salt, a bit of a 'let's wait and see what happens,'" Hillman told MarketWatch.

"The markets are appropriately cautious about whether just the mere announcement of tariffs actually means the tariffs will go into effect," she also said. The Trump administration often ends up "exempting product after product" or making deals with trading partners that result in lower rates of import taxes, and there can be a big lag time before tariffs bite because importers tend to stockpile, Hillman added.

This week's much-anticipated trade action against potentially 60 other countries would follow the Trump administration's rollout of new tariffs against Canada on Monday. Administration officials said they were using Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930 to impose 50% tariffs in 30 days on certain Canadian goods in an effort to end what it sees as discriminatory trade practices by Ottawa against some U.S. industries.

Both Georgetown's Hillman and the Peterson Institute's Lovely said they don't expect the Trump administration to use Section 338 again later this week, and they predicted that a separate Section 301 investigation tied to excess-capacity concerns won't be cited either.

Instead, the 301 probe related to forced labor is likely to be cited, although that could lead to fresh lawsuits by importers.

"I think you'll see a challenge there - that there's just been an overreach and abuse of this particular statute," Hillman said. "There's likely to also be a challenge to the underlying investigation - that you didn't actually go in and investigate the forced-labor practices in each one of these countries."

-Victor Reklaitis

This content was created by MarketWatch, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. MarketWatch is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

July 21, 2026 14:16 ET (18:16 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.