Trade Expansion Act

It historically is.

Section two thirty-two of the Trade Expansion Act of nineteen sixty-two allows the president to adjust imports if a product is being imported in quantities or under circumstances that threaten to impair national security.

Oh, wow.

So they're calling cars a national security threat.

So Section 232 are the national security tariffs.

Um, it's the Trade Expansion Act of 1960...

I forget.

But it states that the lack of manufacturing of a good or production of a good in the US, um, poses a threat to US national security, will impose tariffs to force production to come back, uh, to the US.

Selling, general, and administrative expense rose from $53.1 million to $73.5 million, and Technoglass attributes approximately $17 million of that increase directly to Section 232 tariffs on finished aluminum window imports.

Section 232 is the national security provision of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, the authority a US president uses to put duties on imported metals without going through Congress.

$17 million is roughly 60% of the entire $28.1 million decline in adjusted EBITDA, and it is a customs duty, not a manufacturing cost.

It never touches the cost of building a window.

And I can't believe how many smart people I know still believe that if the Democrats win in the midterms, everything will change.

They have not read the text of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962.

And so it might be boring, but sometimes that's what you have to do to know what you're dealing with.

And there's nothing, barring a supermajority in Congress for the Democrats without the DSA, there's no chance of them repealing that legislation, which gives the president, whoever it is, unfettered powers to bring in under national security reasons.

Some of that machinery is now familiar.

Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act gives the US president authority to restrict imports when they are found to threaten national security.

It's become one of Washington's most consequential instruments for intervening in strategically sensitive sectors.

Section 338 is a stranger creature.

In an 8 September statement, U.S. Trade Representative Jameson Greer indicated the revisions target selected Canadian sectors while removing certain non-sensitive goods from the tariff lists.

These actions apply in addition to any existing tariffs imposed under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 and will apply to all covered goods regardless of whether they qualify for preferential treatment under the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement.

An EY Tax Alert provides details.

And the OECD on the 11th of September released a revised version of the Globe Information Return that includes the side-by-side package that was released in January 2026.

So let's go through just for people who don't know.

Section 232 regulations are from the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, which allows the president to restrict imports based on national security assessments.

Yeah, and actually what's more important in this is what came before then.

So in 1952, President Truman seized American steel mills to keep them running during the Korean War.

In the case Learning Resources v. Trump, that the emergency tariffs imposed under the International Emergencies Economic Powers Act including those against us here in Canada and those against Mexico, dated back to March 2025, and the broader global tariffs from April 2025 were unconstitutional.

The White House responded with an executive order ending those specific tariff actions, but, and this is critical, ladies and gentlemen, many other tariffs on Canadian goods imposed under different legal authorities, like Trade Expansion Act, of 1962 on steel, aluminum, autos, copper, lumber, furniture, heavy vehicles, semiconductors.

They remained fully in effect even after that court ruling.

Now, a second recurring justification from the president has centered on the U.S. trade deficit with Canada, which Trump has repeatedly characterized as the United States subsidizing Canada to the tune of what he has called hundreds of billions of dollars, depending on what day.

On October 25th, the Reagan ad controversy erupted, and Trump declared all trade negotiations with Canada to be terminated.

And then we jump to early 2026, and that is when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the IEEPA-based emergency tariffs as unconstitutional, and in Learning Resources v. Trump, some tariffs fall away.

The Section 232 and the Trade Expansion Act tariff on steel, aluminum, auto, lumber, and more items remains firmly in place.

Then in late August of 2026, of course, perhaps the most dramatic collapse yet, and that was when talks between the United States and Canada negotiators fall apart entirely.