The latest information points to a promise by the US president to press ahead with introducing a new global tariff, despite the US Supreme Court's ruling to strike down his earlier decisions.

The US Army and Navy use substantial volumes of South-East Asian tropical timber, including shorea and apitong wood, to produce flooring boards for their own needs. That is now set to change, as the Donald Trump administration wants to restrict imports of shorea and apitong wood, and is also working with the European Union to have both tree species added to the CITES^* list of endangered species.

President Trump has doubled the tariffs on timber, cabinets, bathroom fittings and upholstered furniture imported into the US. He has called the US Supreme Court justices who ruled against the tariffs he imposed “fools and scoundrels”, promising to set a 10% global tariff rate and stressing that it will be “on top of the ordinary tariffs we have already imposed”.

Following the US Supreme Court's ruling against Trump's tariffs (by 6 votes to 3), which upheld a lower court's finding that Donald Trump had exceeded his authority by imposing tariffs under a law intended for national emergencies — meaning that the United States must now refund more than 100 billion US dollars in collected tariffs — the US president addressed the media.

“Effective immediately, all national security tariffs under Section 232 and the existing Section 301 tariffs are in force and remain in force, fully implemented, in full effect and enforceable,” Trump stressed. “Today I will sign an order introducing a 10% global tariff under Section 122, on top of the ordinary tariffs that already apply. We are launching a number of investigations under Section 301 to protect our country from the unfair trading practices of other countries and companies.”

The new tariffs were introduced after the president signed the Section 232 tariffs in October 2025 — tariffs left untouched by the Supreme Court ruling — which set a 10% tariff rate on timber sales from 14 October and a 25% tariff on cabinets, bathroom fittings and upholstered furniture (from 1 January 2026 increased tariffs of up to 50% apply), unless the countries concerned can reach an agreement with US Secretary Howard Lutnick (Howard Lutnick).

At the time, President Trump said that timber imports were weakening the US economy, creating a constant threat of sawmill closures, disrupting wood product supply chains and reducing capacity utilisation in the US wood processing industry: “Because of the state of the United States timber industry, the US may be unable to meet demand for wood products that are critically important to national defence and critical infrastructure,” Trump's statement said, adding that timber is used “to build infrastructure for operational testing and for personnel needs, to store materials, to transport munitions, as a component of munitions, and as a component in missile defence systems and in the thermal protection systems of nuclear weapons transport vehicles”.

The US Army has been working for more than a decade on the use of mass timber building materials at military installations. In 2016, blast tests confirmed the resilience of such materials under heavy combat fire.

Why the US Supreme Court struck down the global tariffs

The US Supreme Court issued a 170-page ruling in which it found that President Trump's use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 to impose tariffs unilaterally on other countries was unconstitutional.

On this subject, Kent Jones, professor emeritus of economics at Babson College in the US, explained that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act had been used as the legal basis for most of the tariffs imposed by Trump. “Although the act allows the president to respond to economic emergencies with various measures, such as embargoes and asset seizures, it does not permit the use of unilaterally imposed tariffs,” Professor Jones noted. “This was an important point in the Supreme Court's ruling. Every other law available to the president for applying tariffs contains specific wording setting out how tariffs are to be applied; there is no such wording in the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.”

It must be said that this is Donald Trump's first major defeat in the Supreme Court, which ruled that he had overstepped his presidential powers by using a law intended for emergencies to tax the American people. The “Liberation Day tariffs” were a significant element of Donald Trump's economic and foreign policy. They have brought in billions.

“The majority ruling, in which three conservatives joined the court's liberal justices, held that the president had exceeded his authority to impose tariffs under Article I, Section 8 of the US Constitution. Any delegation of tariff-setting powers to the president in an emergency must comply with that provision.”

“It is worth noting that President Trump openly stated that one of the advantages of tariffs is the amount of revenue they bring in. The majority ruling states that this amounts to an “unauthorised presidential power to tax”, which is likewise governed by the Article I, Section 8 provision that grants that power to the US Congress alone.”

* CITES – the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, also known as the Washington Convention, is a multilateral treaty for the protection of endangered plants and animals in international trade. The convention was drawn up on the basis of a resolution adopted in 1963 at a meeting of the member states of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). The convention was opened for signature in 1973, and CITES entered into force on 1 July 1975. Its aim is to ensure that international trade (import/export) does not threaten the survival of species in the wild. This is achieved through a system of permits and certificates. CITES provides varying levels of protection to more than 40,900 species.