According to his own post on Truth Social, President Donald Trump wants any country that supplies military weapons to Iran to pay a 50% tariff on everything it sells to the United States. “There will be no exclusions or exemptions!” he wrote on Wednesday, April 8. He named no country.
The timing is part of the message. The post came hours after Trump accepted a ceasefire with Tehran lasting two weeks. Before it, American strikes had gone on for over five weeks aimed at Iranian rocket launch sites, bases and weapons makers. Tariffs are a fresh lever once the bombing pauses. Reuters read it as a warning to China and Russia not to restock Iran’s arsenals.
The legal question
The post did not say which law he would use. That is a real gap. In February the Supreme Court ruled that he had overreached when he leaned on IEEPA, the 1977 emergency-economic-powers law, to impose sweeping global tariffs, and a lower court then ordered repayment of some $166 billion taken in during a year. Other tools exist. An unfair-trade case on Chinese goods under Section 301, opened in his first term, is still live, and analyst Josh Lipsky of the Atlantic Council called it the most likely vehicle for quick new duties. Section 232 of the 1962 Trade Expansion Act, which targets particular industries on national security grounds, is slower: it needs a new investigation and public comment that could take months.
Who it is aimed at
“This is a China-related threat, the way I read it. And China will read it that way,” Lipsky said. Beijing and Moscow both say they have not recently supplied weapons, though claims about Russia have not gone away. In February Reuters reported that Tehran was weighing a purchase of supersonic cruise missiles for use against ships from China, and in March that China’s top chipmaker, SMIC, had shipped chipmaking equipment to Iran’s armed forces, per two senior Trump administration officials. Zhang Xiaogang, a spokesperson for China’s defense ministry, rejected the reports on Thursday and said China has “always been open and above board on the Iran issue.”
Lipsky doubted Trump would follow through soon, since fresh duties could wreck the Beijing visit he has planned to see Xi Jinping. Jamieson Greer, the trade representative, had said on Tuesday that the president wanted calm in the relationship: he wants to keep a flow of Chinese rare-earth minerals and leave existing tariff levels where they are. “What we are not looking for is massive confrontation,” he said.
Russia matters less on the trade ledger. American imports from it rose 26.1% in 2025 to $3.8 billion, mostly palladium, fertilizers and enriched uranium, and Commerce has begun steps toward penalty duties on Russian palladium following an anti-dumping probe.
Sources
- Trump announces 50% tariffs on countries supplying Iran with weapons (TRT World)
- Trump threatens 50% tariffs on countries supplying Iran with weapons (Oman Observer)
