Friday’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling against some of President Donald Trump’s widespread global tariffs opens the door to challenge other tariffs still plaguing B.C.’s softwood lumber and aluminum sector.

While the ruling doesn’t lift long-standing anti-dumping levies on B.C. wood, Premier David Eby says it “opens up the possibility” of the province mounting a legal challenge to the 10 per cent tariff imposed last fall based on what Trump says are national security grounds.

“If that’s available to us … we will do what is necessary to defend our softwood lumber in the province,”  he said at a press conference in Vancouver.

The 10 per cent tariff on imports of wood products went into effect in October. It came after Trump ordered an investigation last year under Section 232 of the U.S.’s 1962 Trade Expansion Act, based on a worry that wood products made outside of the U.S. threatened the country’s own wood products industry, and therefore threatened its economic strength and national security.

Trump used the same national security justification when he imposed tariffs on global steel and aluminum imports last June.

Eby says that Friday’s Supreme Court ruling shows that justices will carefully examine how tariffs are justified by the president or lawmakers.

A careful reading of Trump’s justifications for the 10 per cent tariff “would not find that wood products are a national security threat to the United States,” Eby said.

He says the province will reach out to the U.S.-based law firm it retained as part of its response to U.S. tariffs to see what options are available following Friday’s ruling.