Trade Expansion Act

Trade Expansion Act of 1962
Great Seal of the United States
Citations
Public law19 U.S.C. ch. 7
Legislative history
  • Introduced in the House of Representatives
  • Committee consideration by House Ways and Means, Senate Finance
  • Passed the House on June 28, 1962 (298–125)
  • Passed the Senate on September 19, 1962 (78–8)
  • Agreed to by the Senate on   and by the House on 
  • Signed into law by President John F. Kennedy on October 11, 1962

The Trade Expansion Act of 1962 (Pub. L. 87–794, 76 Stat. 872, enacted October 11, 1962, codified at 19 U.S.C. ch. 7) is an American trade law.[1]

Section 232 of the Act permits the President to impose tariffs based on a recommendation by the U.S. Secretary of Commerce if "an article is being imported into the United States in such quantities or under such circumstances as to threaten or impair the national security."[2] This section was used only in 1979 and 1982,[2] and had not been invoked since the creation of the World Trade Organization in 1995,[3] until President Trump cited it on March 8, 2018 to impose tariffs on steel and aluminum.

  1. ^ McAdam, Mark (2022). "Making ideas actionable in institutionalism: the case of trade liberalization in Kennedy's foreign economic policy". Journal of Institutional Economics. 18 (5): 827–841. doi:10.1017/S1744137421000849. ISSN 1744-1374. S2CID 245040776.
  2. ^ a b Shannon Togawa Mercer & Matthew Kahn, America Trades Down: The Legal Consequences of President Trump's Tariffs Archived 2024-01-13 at the Wayback Machine, Lawfare (March 13, 2018).
  3. ^ Tom Miles, Trump's extraordinary tariffs Archived 2018-03-14 at the Wayback Machine, Reuters (March 5, 2018).