How to dodge tariffs on Chinese goods
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Has it, though, really?
What did the Supreme Court decide about Trump's tariffs?
From American public media, this is Marketplace.
In Los Angeles, I'm Kyle Risdahl. It is Friday today, the 20th of February. Good as always to have you along, everybody. Six to three was the tally in the Supreme Court of the United States today, as you have no doubt heard, striking down President Trump's tariff palooza of April last. The International Emergency Economic Powers Act was the statute in question, but it is important to understand here that that tariff-free we are not, which is among the things I'm going to talk about with Martha Gimbel right now. She's the executive director of the Budget Lab at Yale. Martha, it's good to have you back on the program.
Thank you for having me.
All right. So let us test my hypothesis or the president's hypothesis, I suppose. Has certainty been restored?
I certainly feel less certain about tariffs than I felt this morning. Just to give you an idea of what my team who looks at this has been up to today, going into this morning, tariffs were almost 17%. Once the Supreme Court ruled, they went down to 9%. That was at 10 a.m. And then the president gave his press conference today. Yeah, exactly. And then the president gave a press conference where he said that he was imposing 10% tariffs under a different legal authority, but that would be temporary, but then they would replace it with other things that were to come. And then that should take it back up to around 15%. So there's been a lot of Sturm und Drang today, but it looks like we're sort of back where we are, but we're still figuring it out.
So let's recap briefly, right? IEPA tariffs are gone, but there are, and this is the nomenclature, and I apologize to listeners, but there are Section 232 tariffs, 301 tariffs, now 122 tariffs from various trade adjustment acts of years gone by. Now what happens? Let's say we stay at 15%. Macroeconomically, what do you suppose happens?
So, you know, we would expect the impacts to be similar to what we've been talking about since we started with this whole Mishigas, right? That you're going to see upward pressure on prices, you know, that it's going to be about $1,600 for an average household. You're going to see slower economic growth, a slight rise in the unemployment rate.
um and you're going to raise a lot of revenue so it's in some ways it's not that different than what we've been talking about before today do you suppose sorry this this goes a little sideways and i wasn't planning on going here but but the federal reserve has been saying by and large look we think tariffs are going to be a one and done thing it's going to pass through the economy and then they're not going to have a continuing effect does this change any of that
You know, the biggest open question with tariffs has never actually been the literal impact of tariffs. It has been how much does the uncertainty surrounding tariffs cause economic activity to slow and prices to go up? So if you're concerned about uncertainty and the effects that it has on the economy, we know what uncertainty does to economic growth. It's not good. then today certainly doesn't make you calmer about the direction the economy's been heading in. Now, on the other hand, the American economy's been able to overcome a lot before. It will certainly be able to overcome a lot again. I will also say – you didn't ask me about this, but we got the personal income report this morning. And we saw year over year that people's real disposable income was sort of heading towards zero.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–0:42
2
What did the Supreme Court decide about Trump's tariffs?
0:42–6:23
3
How have businesses adapted to avoid tariffs on Chinese goods?
6:23–9:58
4
What is transshipping and how does it work?
9:58–26:02
5
What are the implications of the tariff ruling for businesses and consumers?
26:02–26:03