David J. Lynch

Companies got their refunds, but it took a while.

In this case, the five businesses that are direct participants in these lawsuits that have been consolidated before the court, they would definitely get a refund right away.

Everybody else might have to apply through this bureaucratic channel.

That could take some time and be unpopular.

But the other thing that would happen is the administration, they're already working on this,

would have a fallback strategy.

If the court were to invalidate all of them, I'm sure the president would very quickly come back and say, okay, in light of that, I'm now going to take the following actions under Section 122 of the 1974 Trade Act or Section 338 of the Trade Law of 1930, and he would, I would assume, cobble together an alternative framework that would get him

if not entirely what he has today in terms of a tariff structure, most of the way there.

Well, my time in the Supreme Court is limited, so I'm reluctant to venture much of a guess.

I would say my thinking on this has changed over the months.

When the lawsuits were first filed, I felt that the administration's argument was kind of a stretch, and I thought it was, frankly,

sort of a slam dunk for the petitioners.

Then I actually read the administration's brief, and as is almost always the case, you know, a good lawyer can make a good argument.

And I came away from that thinking, huh, well, you know, the administration does have an argument here.

I'm not sure it's ironclad, but it's well presented.

And then I talked to some more trade attorneys, and these are specialists far more than I am.

And they saw the ambiguity in the law and the potential for it to go both ways.

So I came in today feeling a little bit 50-50.

The skepticism of some of the questioning has left me at the end of the day inclined to think that the court—

you know, may be prepared to rule against the president, at least to some degree.