Following a year of sweeping tariffs from the Trump administrations, impacts from the duties in 2026 are expected to center around even more uncertainty, brought on by a policy landscape that could shift again with a single court ruling or trade deal. That was the warning from Chad Bown, senior fellow with the Peterson Institute for International Economics, during a February 17 briefing with the Port of Los Angeles.

A year ago, the trade environment looked far simpler. In February 2025, the U.S. had imposed a 10% tariff on China and little else. But what followed was the most aggressive run of tariff activity since World War II, with new duties hitting China, Canada and Mexico, alongside the administration’s so-called “Liberation Day” levies last spring.

While the pace of new announcements slowed in the back half of the year, the bigger issue now isn’t just the tariffs themselves, but the whiplash effect of a White House that has shown a willingness to deploy them for reasons that extend well beyond traditional trade policy, said Bown.

"Some of the tariffs you can motivate as potentially being important parts of U.S. government policy for national security resilience," Peterson explained. "But a lot of them don't necessarily make a whole lot of economic sense."

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The result has been a near-endless period of uncertainty for businesses, forcing them to figure out how to source any number of products differently, and then weigh that against the potential for any new policy announcements that could quickly upend those decisions. And despite frequent claims from President Donald Trump that other countries would end up paying for the bulk of his tariffs, research published by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York on February 12 revealed that 90% of the economic burden has instead fallen on American companies and consumers.

Bown noted that the trade landscape could further shift in 2026 if the U.S. Supreme Court strikes down the majority of Trump's tariffs, as part of a lawsuit that was presented to justices in November of 2025. Should that happen, the Treasury Department could be forced to refund billions of dollars in tariff revenue collected over the last year, which would create yet another period of uncertainty and chaos, Bown said.

Also on the docket for 2026 is the impending review of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, set to take place in July. While stakeholders on both sides of the aisle have repeatedly stressed the importance of preserving the core of the USMCA, Bloomberg reports that Trump is reportedly considering withdrawing from the pact altogether. The President also called the deal "irrelevant" during a January visit to Detroit, Michigan, setting the stage for a contentious showdown with the country's two closest trading partners this summer.

"Watching how all of that plays out over the course of 2026 will be important," said Bown.