Jeff Guo

So these laws, they were mostly created during the Cold War to give the president economic powers to, you know, deal with all that Cold War stuff.

But for decades, through the 90s and 2000s, they weren't really used that much.

After Trump was elected for his first term, he started using some of these three-digit laws, mostly Section 301 and Section 232, to create new tariffs.

The Supreme Court's latest decision doesn't touch any of the tariffs created under those three-digit laws.

But if you are a president who loves sweeping tariffs, most of these three-digit laws have a major limitation.

Most of them only let you create specific targeted tariffs.

For instance, Section 232 is all about protecting national security.

So if the Supreme Court would let the president use IEPA like he wanted to use it, he could create a bunch of tariffs with just the stroke of his pen.

And now it seems like there really isn't any law that would give him that kind of power.

He said Section 122.

Yes.

So what what is going on?

Kathleen says, yeah, welcome to Section 122.

Has a president ever used Section 122 to make tariffs?

But Kathleen says a lot of trade law professors have been expecting Trump to turn to this Section 122 law at some point.

And there is a big caveat here, which is that tariffs created under Section 122, they are supposed to expire after 150 days.

It sounds like law professors have already kind of had hypothetical fights about this hypothetical use of this law.

Now, for Cara Dyer, the business owner from earlier, who, by the way, sells toys, all of this tariff whiplash is so exhausting to think about.

And she was hopeful that maybe China or the Chinese manufacturers she worked with would help chip in.

Kara ended up switching suppliers.