LatAm in Focus: After IEEPA, What Tariff Tools Will Trump Turn to Next?

Close followers of trade news were waiting for this moment: On February 20, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6–3 against President Donald Trump’s use of the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA, to slap tariffs on trade partners around the world. 

Trump first employed IEEPA, a measure typically used to apply sanctions, a year ago, when he imposed tariffs on Canada, Mexico, and China with the argument that these three countries hadn’t done enough to stop fentanyl flows into the United States. Then the president invoked IEEPA again in April 2025, when he slapped tariffs on countries around the world. “Some have referred to IEEPA as Trump's lighting bolt. If he was a Greek god, he could just trigger it and apply it whenever he wanted,” Diego Marroquín Bitar, a fellow with the Americas Program at the Center for Strategic & International Studies and USMCA expert, told AS/COA Online’s Carin Zissis. 

Although SCOTUS' decision reined in Trump's tariffs on one front, he soon enough used another piece of legislation, section 122 of the 1974 Trade Act, to impose new global duties.   

“President Trump has a huge trade arsenal at his disposal, and what we're going to be seeing in the next few weeks is the Trump administration using other measures [that are] more procedural but are less legally exposed,” Marroquín explained in this episode of Latin America in Focus, untangling the many options the president has to continue his tariff-based trade policy—from section 122 to 232 to 301. 

The ruling served as a watershed moment, with the Court demonstrating its ability to serve as a counterbalance to executive authority. But SCOTUS didn’t indicate what should happen to some $175 billion in IEEPA tariffs that could potentially need to be refunded. Nor does its ruling mean an end to Trump’s tariff moves.  

“This is the end of the beginning, the first chapter of these trade wars,” said Marroquín.

Our guest

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Diego Marroquín Bitar

Diego Marroquín Bitar is a fellow with the Americas Program at the Center for Strategic & International Studies, where he supports the work of the U.S.–Mexico–Canada Agreement (USMCA) Strategic Initiative. Previously the Inaugural Bersin-Foster North America Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center, he cofounded the North America Project at the U.S.–Mexico Foundation, and the nonprofit North America 3.0. You can read Marroquín’s analysis in "North America Compass."