is it then not possible for him to circumvent the ruling entirely by simply taxing the industries that account for like 99% of the trade with a given country? like it probably wouldn’t be possible to list all the industries but surely listing 10 most popular ones would essentially equate to a blanket tariff
Not quite. The industry specific tariffs are not a free workaround for blanket tariffs. Each sector tariff needs its own legal basis, investigation and justification, often tied to national security or trade remedy rules. If the government just picked the top industries to recreate a country wide tariff, courts could treat that as pretext or abuse of authority. So “10 big industries = basically blanket tariff” may be economically similar but legally it is not the same thing
is it then not possible for him to circumvent the ruling entirely by simply taxing the industries that account for like 99% of the trade with a given country? like it probably wouldn’t be possible to list all the industries but surely listing 10 most popular ones would essentially equate to a blanket tariff
Not quite. The industry specific tariffs are not a free workaround for blanket tariffs. Each sector tariff needs its own legal basis, investigation and justification, often tied to national security or trade remedy rules. If the government just picked the top industries to recreate a country wide tariff, courts could treat that as pretext or abuse of authority. So “10 big industries = basically blanket tariff” may be economically similar but legally it is not the same thing