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Bloomberg Talks

Instant Reaction: Trump's Global Tariffs Struck Down By Supreme Court

20 Feb 2026

Transcription

Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?

1.718 - 3.581 David Gurra

The news doesn't stop on the weekends.

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3.881 - 8.809 Christina Ruffini

Context changes constantly. And now Bloomberg is the place to stay on top of it all.

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9.11 - 13.817 David Gurra

Hi, I'm David Gurra. Join us every Saturday and Sunday for the new Bloomberg This Weekend.

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13.837 - 29.262 Christina Ruffini

I'm Christina Ruffini. We'll bring you the latest headlines, in-depth analysis, and big interviews. All the stories that hit home on your days off. And I'm Lisa Mateo. Watch and listen to Bloomberg This Weekend for thoughtful, enlightening conversations about business, lifestyle, people, and culture.

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29.242 - 35.232 David Gurra

On Saturday mornings, we put the past week's events into context, examining what happened in the markets and the world.

35.612 - 45.789 Christina Ruffini

Then on Sundays, we speak with journalists, columnists, and key political figures to prepare you for the week ahead. Join us as soon as you wake up and bring us with you wherever your weekend plans take you.

45.989 - 52.92 David Gurra

Watch us on Bloomberg Television, listen on Bloomberg Radio, stream the show live on the Bloomberg Business app, or listen to the podcast.

52.9 - 74.993 Christina Ruffini

That's Bloomberg This Weekend, Saturdays and Sundays starting at 7 a.m. Eastern on February 28th. Make us part of your weekend routine on Bloomberg Television, radio, and wherever you get your podcasts. Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts. Radio. News.

76.711 - 86.044 David Gurra

This is a breaking news update from Bloomberg. Instant reaction and analysis from our 3,000 journalists and analysts around the world.

Chapter 2: What did the Supreme Court decide about Trump's global tariffs?

422.617 - 445.898 Tyler Kendall

That's over unfair trade practices. We saw a lot of those imposed on China under the first Trump administration. Think allegations of IP protection violations. As one example. And then there's some lesser known ones like Section 338 that hasn't been used since the 1940s. I also have Section 201 here. Tariffs imposed on goods that cause injury to domestic industry. There's a lot.

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446.038 - 460.018 Tyler Kendall

But basically the crux to think of this is that the Trump administration likes IEPA because that's a lot. It's a lot more flexible. It's a lot more broad-based. A lot of these tariffs have limits that have to go away after a certain amount of time, and the rates can't go that high.

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460.038 - 468.588 Tyler Kendall

A lot of these tariffs have a 15% ceiling, for example, whereas we know the president, in some cases, has threatened tariffs, you know, 50% and onwards.

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468.889 - 479.888 Paul Sweeney

And also, all the different sections that you cited, Most of these tariffs can't be imposed instantly. There's a bit of waiting time. And we know the president wants to declare something and have it kind of be in effect almost immediately.

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Chapter 3: What are the implications of the Supreme Court ruling on presidential authority?

480.048 - 483.836 Paul Sweeney

And the IEPA tariffs allowed him that flexibility, as you put it.

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484.116 - 498.495 Tyler Kendall

Exactly. A Section 232 investigation on average takes nine months to complete. We have seen this administration in some cases do this under a more expedited timeline because they actually pulled on investigations that were launched under the first Trump administration.

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498.535 - 520.455 Tyler Kendall

So they were able to make the legal argument that they already had such a bolstering of information behind them that they could make the determination that this meets the national security concerns or the unfair trade allegations to put on their terrorists. But to your point exactly, Scarlett, this definitely limits the flexibility of the administration. Tyler, thank you so much.

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520.475 - 538.544 Paul Sweeney

And it's just our luck that Tyler Kendall happened to be in New York today. Clearly, she was not anticipating this. I mean, we knew that this decision was coming along at some point, but the Supreme Court had passed up the previous two or three instances when it could have come out with this decision. Tyler Kendall, Bloomberg's Washington correspondent, on her way back to D.C. this afternoon.

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538.745 - 540.287 Paul Sweeney

Thank you so much. Thank you.

541.212 - 558.765 Scarlet Fu

All right, let's go to June Grasso right now, Bloomberg Law's host. She joins us here in studio. June, I guess this was expected from somewhat expected from a legal perspective. Does the six to three vote, does that mean anything one way or the other, as opposed to maybe have a unanimous nine zero?

559.235 - 580.973 June Grasso

Well, I mean, I guess it would be preferable for the people in the majority, for the justices in the majority to say, you know, this was a unanimous vote. But otherwise, you know, it doesn't really matter. It's six to three with the very conservative justices in the minority. I mean, this was expected after the Supreme Court oral arguments happened.

580.953 - 605.472 June Grasso

it seemed as if this was the definite conclusion. And so people were wondering what was taking so long. Well, what's taking so long is it's 170 pages. So it's kind of difficult to get through and to figure out exactly what happened. But what happened during the oral arguments was that you have this statute AIPA that no other president has used to impose tariffs.

605.853 - 623.928 June Grasso

And under this statute, there's a word called regulate. So how do you interpret regulate? Does that mean you can impose tariffs or not? And, you know, a lot of the justices, particularly the liberal justices, harped on the language of the statute. What does it mean?

Chapter 4: What are the potential market reactions to the tariff ruling?

942.479 - 954.653 Paul Sweeney

Henrietta, the market had largely anticipated this. We saw it with the reaction in certain retail stocks, companies that would benefit from the rollback of these tariffs. How are you looking at this?

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955.477 - 981.598 Henrietta Treyz

I agree. This is just a tremendous day, a huge win for the Constitution, for folks who cover tax policy, for anybody who remembers the Revolutionary War. We fought against specifically a taxation power that Congress did not have any say over. So this is, in my opinion, the largest and most impactful macroeconomic ruling the courts have ever delivered. So just a tremendous day.

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981.778 - 1005.01 Henrietta Treyz

It is in line with what the market was expecting. You can see that investors were very prepared to rip the retail stocks, everybody who's been exposed to the 40% transshipping tariffs, the ad hoc 50% tariffs on Brazil, the wide-ranging threats of 200% tariffs on French wine that have just been spewing out of the White House for 12 months now.

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1005.671 - 1009.817 Henrietta Treyz

So it's really an exhilarating day, an incredible day for the Constitution.

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1009.797 - 1023.351 Scarlet Fu

In my opinion, Henrietta, is this do you think emboldened any of President Trump's adversaries, whether in Congress or just within Washington, D.C. apparatus that maybe this gives them a little bit more confidence to push back? Is there any reason to believe that?

1024.208 - 1040.33 Henrietta Treyz

Absolutely. I think there's two ways to look at this. First of all, this is exceptional news for President Trump. Americans hate the tariffs. They know their taxes. They know that they're driving inflation and they don't like them. So now that that authority has been stripped away from him, the president no longer has to collect these taxes.

1040.39 - 1060.324 Henrietta Treyz

It's up to him to decide whether he wants to migrate into new and different authorities like Section 122 that give him the ability to impose tariffs at a 15 percent rate for the next five months. If he wants to do that, he can go ahead on. But the American public will be very grateful that the Supreme Court struck these tariffs down and even more grateful if he keeps them off.

1060.705 - 1084.541 Henrietta Treyz

So that's one way of looking at it. And Republicans on Capitol Hill are staring down the barrel of a very ugly affordability narrative election cycle. where we've seen races as diverse as Texas swing 31 points away from President Trump just since he was elected. Those are tremendous losses for the Republican conference, and most of it is driven by the president's handling of the US economy.

1084.902 - 1097.415 Henrietta Treyz

It's influenced not just the traditional independent voter that we are always concerned with, but also with young male and Hispanic voters who have driven the president to his second term. So a lot to see here.

Chapter 5: How might tariff refunds affect importers?

1111.87 - 1119.96 Paul Sweeney

also benefiting from this ruling. Paul asks a really important question, Henrietta. Basic. It's very basic. Are tariffs rolled back starting today?

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1120.953 - 1138.258 Henrietta Treyz

They are legal. So at Border Patrol, one of the things that's questionable here is that the White House has said all these trade deals are still going to be intact. You know, we've signed these agreements. That is null and void. Now, if you are an importer and you are at Customs and Border Patrol, you no longer. longer will suffer paying for these tariffs.

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1138.358 - 1157.945 Henrietta Treyz

The Supreme Court has told Customs and Border Patrol they can no longer collect them. So this is a problem that the White House is going to have to address. They have a number of trade deals that they have signed. I believe there's about eight at this point, and many of them include a reciprocal tariff of 10 percent in the case of the UK or 19 percent in the case of Indonesia.

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1157.985 - 1173.648 Henrietta Treyz

Those tariffs are illegal. The Supreme Court has told the Customs and Border Patrol people this authority is not permitted. So it's the importers who are going to rise up and say, I'm not paying. It doesn't matter what the countries independently decide or whatever the White House says.

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1174.509 - 1188.169 Scarlet Fu

So what do we expect this administration? How do you expect the president and administration to respond to? Do you think they will aggressively try to work other tariff routes or maybe just let this issue die and just fade away?

1188.723 - 1209.207 Henrietta Treyz

appreciate the question paul i am widely wildly out of consensus on this but what i just described on section 122 is just one of the many alternates and alternatives that the president has section 301 which is you know 350 billion dollars worth of tariffs on china we could re-up that and apply it to the EU, the UK or Brazil. All of those have been threatened.

1209.607 - 1230.798 Henrietta Treyz

But think about what functionally that means. It means that individual businesses will have to go out again, get their trade lawyers on the payroll to comply with brand new, potentially even unused authorities that they'll have to comply with once again. Is it a 15% tariff rate under Section 122. Does it exist now? When's the president going to put it on?

1231.259 - 1248.305 Henrietta Treyz

What do I need to worry about with the national security tariff? The confusion and the uncertainty, which were the buzzwords following Liberation Day in April, are going to come roaring back in the event the president decides to migrate away from IEPA and move into new and different authorities. I think it would be extraordinarily disruptive.

1248.325 - 1269.878 Henrietta Treyz

And again, with my eye on the election cycle and the affordability narrative, the president, I think, is already on a very tight leash and he's not going to have the leeway to fully reimpose anywhere near the revenue that has been collected by so far. So I don't think these tariffs will ever come back at their current level. And I think they will be much more restrained going forward.

Chapter 6: What alternative tariff authorities can the Trump administration use?

1860.874 - 1865.54 Caroline Hepke

So whether it's geopolitics, energy, tech or markets, you're hearing it while it happens.

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1865.98 - 1867.983 Stephen Carroll

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1868.443 - 1869.885 Caroline Hepke

And it fits into your morning.

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1869.95 - 1880.938 Stephen Carroll

You can find new episodes of the Bloomberg Daybreak Europe podcast by 7am in Dublin or 8am in Brussels, Berlin and Paris on Apple, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.

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