00:00So, James, the U.S. Appeals Court has ruled large parts of Trump's reciprocal tariffs
00:04unlawful.
00:06For the non-lawyers watching, what exactly did the court say and which tariffs are affected?
00:11So the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit was taking up the same set of tariffs
00:16that the U.S. Court of International Trade ruled was unlawful here a few months back.
00:21Those are the reciprocal tariffs as well as the set of so-called fentanyl tariffs, which
00:26applied to Mexico, Canada, and China.
00:29There were some more recent tariffs introduced on India and on Brazil.
00:36It doesn't extend to the more recent tariff actions.
00:39And the Federal Circuit's holding was that, at least in the view of the majority, so seven
00:43out of four of the full court, that those tariffs were unlawful.
00:49Ultimately, at this point, it's looking extremely likely that the Supreme Court is going to take
00:53this up.
00:54Tariffs have been one of U.S. President Donald Trump's most powerful foreign policy tools.
00:59If the Supreme Court takes this case, when might we actually learn whether or not the
01:04president has this authority?
01:05Since they've given an October 14th deadline, it seems likely that the Supreme Court would
01:11take it up within the next turn, which means, you know, in sort of a common case, it's about
01:17a nine month time frame.
01:19It could be faster.
01:20It could be three months faster.
01:22It could be three months slower.
01:25And it varies a lot within that time frame.
01:28Trump administration officials say that even if this authority is struck down, they have
01:32other legal tools to impose tariffs.
01:35Are they right?
01:36Are there other easy legal workarounds?
01:39The administration does have options.
01:41They have a gap filler option under Section 122.
01:45It's time bound, 150 days.
01:47It's capped at 15%, but they could do it in order to buy themselves time to act under other
01:53tariff authorities like Section 301, which is what the administration has relied on with
01:59respect to the tariffs on China, related intellectual property and that sort of thing.
02:04It would just take them some time.
02:06They'd have to go through a process.
02:07Whether or not these specific tariffs disappear, I wouldn't anticipate tariffs as a whole disappearing.
02:15There's just several different options that the administration has in terms of how they
02:20want to reach a very similar policy result.
02:25Taiwan has been negotiating a deal with Washington to lower its tariff level, and everyone has been
02:30waiting for the announcement of special tariffs on Taiwan's most valuable export, semiconductors.
02:36Now, those depend on a Commerce Department investigation, known as Section 232, that could be out
02:42any day now.
02:43Would this case have any effect on those special semiconductor tariffs?
02:48No, it wouldn't.
02:50It might have an effect on the negotiating dynamic.
02:54We've seen that Taipei is trying to negotiate, as many other countries have done, sort of collectively,
03:00the reciprocal tariff level as well as the level with respect to the Section 232
03:06investigations that they care about, which includes, obviously, semiconductors.
03:11And so, this opinion isn't going to have any direct effect on those at all.
03:16So, it might recolor the sort of negotiating dynamic between the two parties.
03:23It might recolor the sort of negotiating dynamic between the two parties.
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