What is Section 338?
Section 338 dates back to the original 1930 Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, the law economic historians generally credit with deepening the Great Depression by triggering a wave of retaliatory tariffs worldwide. The provision was built to enforce reciprocity: a tool to keep trading partners from giving other countries better treatment than they gave the United States, not a general-purpose lever for broad tariff action.
For nearly a century, it sat unused. Trade officials note that past administrations, including Franklin D. Roosevelt’s, weighed invoking it and never followed through. July’s proclamations mark its first confirmed use.
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