00:00Tell us about Rick Waldenberg and his challenge to the president's tariffs.
00:04Yeah, he is just the head of two connected educational toy businesses outside Chicago.
00:09It's a family-owned business, sort of stemmed from companies founded by his father and his mother.
00:15And they make most of their products overseas in China.
00:19And so these tariffs hit them pretty hard.
00:23And they hit them even harder because as they tried to shift around their production lines,
00:29they sometimes did a bad job of guessing where the next tariffs would be imposed.
00:34And he was fed up enough that he decided to sue.
00:37And his is one of the cases that made its way up to the Supreme Court.
00:42So in terms of this actually having an effect on the president's agenda,
00:46could this just completely reshape the implementation of tariffs?
00:53Oh, absolutely, Tim.
00:54Now, let me first say that there are other authorities that the administration has used,
00:59and the president and the administration has said they'll use even more to impose tariffs
01:04without regard to what happens at the Supreme Court.
01:06But at the Supreme Court, it's about this law that gives the president some emergency powers
01:12to do certain things to protect the economy.
01:15And that law is what the president has used for about 60 percent of the tariffs that are in place right now.
01:21If the Supreme Court says that law does not authorize the president to impose tariffs,
01:27that would knock those tariffs out.
01:29It could open the way for upwards of $100 billion in refunds.
01:34And it would certainly make it much harder for the president to use tariffs
01:37as his sort of favorite cudgel to try to get trading partners to do what he wants.
01:42How difficult the case is this for the Supreme Court to figure out?
01:47It's not really that difficult.
01:48It's the kind of case they deal with all the time.
01:50It's really, at its core, a question about this statute and some words in the statute and what they mean.
01:56Now, this statute authorizes the president, gives him certain powers, but it doesn't mention tariffs.
02:03The thing it does say is that the president may regulate importation.
02:07And at the core of the case, it's really about whether those words mean that the president can impose tariffs,
02:13at least the kind of sweeping tariffs that we're looking at here.
02:16So it is a familiar type of case for them.
02:19It is perhaps one that they're considering on a faster track than they normally do.
02:23But it's really kind of a quintessential Supreme Court issue.
02:26I mean, look, you cover the legal side of this.
02:28You cover the Supreme Court side of this.
02:29But I can't ignore the sum exceeding $100 billion potentially.
02:33That's a real fiscal issue for the United States, Greg.
02:36Yeah, it's both a fiscal issue for the United States and, you know, it would be a relief to the businesses,
02:43the American businesses who have been paying these tariffs the whole time.
02:47And it could have some spillover effect on inflation.
02:50You know, so Rick Waldenberg, the CEO of this company, when I was up there,
02:53said that they have tried to hold their prices down, but they've raised them in the middle single digits.
02:59And, you know, that inflationary pressure will still be there with these tariffs.
03:02And if the Supreme Court rules against Trump, there will be a little less inflationary pressure.
03:07Is that likely, Greg, that they're going to rule against this president?
03:11It is certainly possible, Carol.
03:13I'm not sure I want to put odds on it.
03:16We have, of course, seen the court side with Trump over and over and over again on preliminary matters,
03:21on temporary questions of can he do a certain thing while litigation goes forward.
03:26This is the first time they've actually considered whether, at the core, he has the power to do something.
03:32Keep in mind that there are some precedents out there during the Biden years where they, on several occasions,
03:37said, no, Joe Biden cannot, for example, forgive a whole bunch of student loans, billions of dollars in student loans.
03:43And they sort of restricted the power of the president to take general statutory language to do very, very big things.
03:49And those precedents may come into play and give the opponents of the tariffs an edge.
03:54Yeah, I feel like we're constantly talking about presidential power here.
03:57Hey, 30 seconds, if I may.
03:59Lisa Cook of the Fed, she's making some comments she addressed about people reaching out.
04:05And she's grateful for that but doesn't want to comment on the case.
04:07That case, her case, goes before the Supreme Court in January.
04:13And we know that the president tried to remove her just very quickly, 20, 25 seconds.
04:17Any idea how that might play out?
04:19Well, we'll get a big clue next month in December when they consider another case that has to do with the president's ability under the Constitution
04:27to fire other people like the Democratic commissioner on the Federal Trade Commission in that case.
04:32It's not exactly the same issue, but it's closely connected.
04:35The Supreme Court has previously suggested it wants to preserve Fed independence, so that may play a factor there.
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