00:00Jennifer, can I just get your initial thoughts to this decision from the Supreme Court?
00:04Well, I would agree with Senator Schumer that this is a big victory for American consumers,
00:08but I would argue from a legal perspective that it's an even bigger victory for the U.S.
00:13Constitution, because what this is basically saying is the court is acknowledging that the
00:19Constitution gives to the Congress, not to the president, the power to impose tariffs.
00:24And so this ruling is saying that the president cannot use this IEPA statute that doesn't
00:29even have the word tariff or duty in it to somehow turn it into a tariff statute.
00:35So in that sense, I think, yeah.
00:37Well, I was just curious, what was your initial reaction?
00:39Were you surprised?
00:40I know a number of individuals thought for reciprocal tariffs, IEPA would be struck down,
00:44but potentially the Supreme Court would uphold the use of IEPA for something like fentanyl,
00:48which has been a health emergency in the United States.
00:51Actually, I was not surprised.
00:54Now, I will confess that I have been, you know, taking that view for a long time.
00:58But I think the court's opinion is quite clear, and it's a straight up, you know, analysis of the
01:04law.
01:05Does, again, it starts with the Congress alone has the power to impose tariffs.
01:10And so the question before the court was whether IEPA hands over, delegates that authority
01:16to the president.
01:17And the court looked at the statute and came to the unequivocal conclusion that the answer
01:22is no.
01:23The statute itself does not contain the word tariff or duty.
01:26It says nothing about how you would determine how much tariffs on what.
01:31So I am actually not surprised.
01:33And I think this is the better of the opinions, the roads that the court could have gone down.
01:38This is the clean, clear constitutional road that the court chose.
01:43What do you think of this idea, Jennifer?
01:46If I can forgive me jumping in.
01:48And what do you think of this idea proposed by Neil Dutta, that the issue is, is if he
01:53doesn't turn the tariff knob right back on, he looks like a lame duck.
01:57Does this cause the president to act even more forcefully, to find ways to enact tariffs,
02:03just not through IEPA this time?
02:05It might.
02:06I think the answer to that question is really going to depend on how all of the trading partners
02:11that have now agreements, frameworks, shapes of an agreement, whether they come back and
02:18say, OK, look, the whole basis for our negotiating these agreements was to get out from under the
02:23IEPA tariffs.
02:24And if there are no IEPA tariffs, then we're not going to we're not going to move forward
02:27with these agreements.
02:28If if countries are signaling that, then the president may very well invoke Section 122.
02:34And I would say that is the only statute that would allow the president to impose tariffs
02:39on all countries, all goods with, again, every other option before the president would require
02:46that the tariffs be either country specific following an investigation such as under Section 301
02:52or product specific following, again, another investigation under Section 232, indicating
02:59that there's a national security threat with respect to those particular tariffs.
03:03So in that sense, you know, again, I think the the decision about whether or not to invoke
03:10Section 122, whether or not to try to put immediate tariffs in place on all goods from all countries,
03:15I think is a little bit of a wait and see, but not very long.
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