'Friction' rising in Trump admin as officials desperately try to revive tariffs: report

President Donald Trump almost immediately vowed to re-implement his global tariffs after the Supreme Court struck down his authority to implement them under emergency powers law — but inside the administration, his officials are scrambling to try to find a way to make it work.

This comes after Trump ran with the dissenting opinion of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who suggested a number of other statutes would be workable for imposing more or less the same policies the court just struck down.

According to The New York Times, implementing the tariffs again under different statutes "will require a more cumbersome set of tariffs, ones that Mr. Trump will not be able to issue quickly or on a whim. The tariffs may be levied by country, trade issue or product and will probably take months to go into effect. The question now is how closely the old structure will be reproduced — or whether the new tariffs could end up creating an entirely different set of winners and losers."

"The process is already creating friction inside the administration as officials try to satisfy Mr. Trump’s desire for swift and punishing tariffs," said the report. "Officials at the Office of the United States Trade Representative and the Commerce Department are vying for which agency should be in the lead, people familiar with the matter said."

Some of these statutes require federal investigations to determine various types of trade abuses or imbalances, so, the report noted, staffers have been scrambling to start those investigations to lend legitimacy to Trump's orders.

For example, the report said, "At the Department of Commerce, employees are looking into new trade investigations on industries including batteries, chemicals, plastics and equipment for telecommunications and the electrical grid, people familiar with the matter said. Those investigations are being run under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, which allows for tariffs to be imposed on national security grounds."

Already, however, some economic experts have said this new tariff push is unlikely to succeed, as some of the statutes are not remotely applicable to the current state of the trade system.