Chapter 1: What recent decision did the Supreme Court make regarding Trump's tariffs?
On this Monday after that big Supreme Court tariff ruling, we'll catch you up on the latest. From American Public Media, this is Marketplace. In Denver, I'm Amy Scott, in for Kai Risdahl. It's Monday, February 23rd. Good to have you with us. So, quick recap. On Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court dealt a serious blow to President Trump's economic agenda.
Chapter 2: What are the implications of the new 15% tariff announced by the White House?
A 6-3 majority ruled that the president had overstepped his authority when he imposed sweeping tariffs on foreign goods using the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or AIPA, last year. Within hours of the decision Friday, Trump pivoted, announcing a new 10 percent tariff with some exemptions under a different statute, Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974.
Then over the weekend, he increased that rate to 15 percent. That new tariff goes into effect at midnight tonight, though unless Congress votes to extend it, it's temporary, expiring in late July. Marketplace's Mitchell Hartman has more now on what to expect.
Under Section 122, President Trump has some very specific tariff-imposing powers, says Erica York at the Tax Foundation.
The president can issue a proclamation without any investigation required to impose tariffs of up to 15 percent, and those can't last more than 150 days unless Congress approves them.
They don't have to be justified by other countries' alleged unfair trade practices or to protect U.S. national security. The president just has to assert that the U.S. faces a balance of payments crisis.
These are rate-limited, time-limited tariffs, not a really broad authority like what the president tried to do under IEPA.
And they don't vary from country to country, so the Trump administration can't use them to punish certain trading partners. But the new tariffs don't cover everything we import, not by a long shot, says Gary Huffpower at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
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Chapter 3: How are businesses reacting to the new tariff changes?
This uniform 15% already has some jagged edges.
Anything covered by the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement isn't subject to the new tariff.
Plus... The president has exempted a lot of specific goods that will not be covered no matter where they come from, like pharmaceuticals, critical minerals.
Also, food imports like beef, tomatoes, and oranges. And products already facing high tariffs to protect U.S. domestic producers, like steel, aluminum, and motor vehicles.
Summing up the new tariff regime, Joe Brusuelis at consulting firm RSM says, For the next 150 days, the average effective tariff rate is going to be somewhere just under 13%. Then after the alleged authority to impose these tariffs expire, it'll be just under 7%.
It was more than twice that high until the Supreme Court threw out President Trump's IEPA tariffs last Friday. I'm Mitchell Hartman for Marketplace.
On Wall Street today, traders were not happy. We'll have the details when we do the numbers.
Thank you.
As we've been reporting since the beginning of the Trump tariff, small businesses have borne much of the brunt of higher import costs. For a look at how what's happened in the past three days is affecting some of those businesses, we're going to have three dispatches on the show today. First up is Katie Lazar, general manager of Kane Vineyard and Winery in Napa Valley, California.
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Chapter 4: What specific goods are exempt from the new tariffs?
We gave her a call to see if anything's changed.
In February, we've attended actually two very important trade shows. The first was an international trade show in Paris called Vine Paris, where there were thousands and thousands of producers. We tried to reestablish our connection with our importers there, and they were unable and unwilling to meet with us at that time.
Now, it doesn't necessarily mean that it's dead forever, but it's dead for another year. For importation, we get all of our barrels from France. We get all of our corks from Portugal and much of our bottles from outside of the United States. So unfortunately, those three primary pieces of our business have all been impacted. You're talking about a minimum of 20% increase in costs.
The first round of tariffs, there was a slight bit of warning. And so there was a lot of cost sharing across the board. This time, we don't have that time to think and work together. So my expectation is that it will hurt us even more because we don't really know what to expect based upon the way the tariffs are being discussed now, which would be 150 days. And then who knows?
That was Katie Lazar, general manager of Kane Winery in Napa Valley. Taking a break from tariffs for the moment. It's tax filing season, and one of the many new items to consider this year is a deduction on interest paid on auto loans for new vehicles. To qualify, those new vehicles need to have been assembled in the United States. There are also income limits.
The deduction was part of that big tax and spending law enacted last year, and it's retroactive to purchases made in 2025. The idea is to ease some costs for consumers while boosting the U.S. auto industry. Marketplace's Nova Sappho has more on how it works and who might benefit. You want to know how expensive it is to buy a new car these days? Well, join me at a Chevy dealership.
Silverado is the most popular. You know, it is the number one selling vehicle.
Brett Hedrick, owner of Hedrick's Chevrolet, is showing me the white pickup displayed in a showroom in Clovis, California. The Silverado truck is popular among the construction and farming crews in the area. And it's consistently one of the most purchased vehicles in the United States.
You know, it goes from a basic work truck to the midline, which is probably the most popular, to the luxury models. These trucks are priced between $40,000 to above $80,000. The Silverado is assembled in the U.S. It's one of the vehicles that stands to benefit from the auto loan interest deduction included in last year's tax and spending law.
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Chapter 5: How might consumers expect to receive tariff refunds?
It's for new vehicles bought between 2025 and 2028. But so far, Hedrick says the deduction is not on his customers' radars. I don't hear many people ask about it. We've trained our people to be able to answer that question. Hedrick is hopeful that will change.
I think what we're going to see is as people get their taxes done, their 25 taxes done this year, we're going to start seeing different questions come up because the accountants are going to say, did you buy a vehicle this year?
Because I can write off the interest. In fact, that's exactly the conversation accountant Johan Garcia has had with three of his clients. Garcia owns the Miami-based firm JGCPA and Advisory.
They were looking to upgrade their vehicle on a financial planning meeting.
And we did a quick analysis, okay, what would be the after-tax cash benefit, right?
Garcia says one of his clients did change plans after considering the deduction. The monthly payment, it was going to be similar whether they leased it or they purchased it, and they decided to purchase it. Great, but still not exactly a big shift in consumer behavior. And that's because for most people, the savings from the deduction will be relatively modest.
Andrew Lautz is director of tax policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center.
If you look at the standard vehicle price, standard loan, assuming a 20% down payment, that translates to anywhere from, you know, a $200 or $300 tax cut for your lower income taxpayers.
And topping out at around $700 for those in the middle. The deduction phases out for single taxpayers making more than $100,000 a year and $200,000 for joint filers.
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Chapter 6: What impact do tariffs have on the auto industry and new tax deductions?
I'm Novosafo for Marketplace. OK, back to tariffs. Next up in our roundup of businesses affected by the recent news is Todd Adams, the president of Sanitube, a stainless steel tubing manufacturer and distributor based in Lakeland, Florida. Basically, my understanding, you know, we import some from China. The rate on China has gone down.
We had a 10% worldwide tariff plus a 10% fentanyl sort of adder for penalty for China, 20% total. The new Section 122 tariffs are 15%. So by my calculations, and I'm not a math whiz, that's a 5% net decrease. In a way, I guess we should be happy, but... I'm not going to be celebrating anything because I don't know what tomorrow is going to bring.
So I'm not I'm not expecting and I don't I don't really want to decrease. I don't want an increase. I just want to know. I just want some stability. Just tell me it's going to be, you know, X amount. Just tell me the number. Once again, you know, the uncertainty essentially creates, you know, a risk premium. So we have to just conserve cash for the unexpected.
It takes away from initiatives that we are contemplating, growth initiatives, expansion initiatives. Just last week, I was looking at another growth initiative that would create a couple good, well-paying U.S. jobs. And once again, that's sort of on the sidelines until I at least get some certainty as to where we're going. It'll be interesting to see where we ultimately settle.
Todd Adams, president of Sanitube, based in Lakeland, Florida. One of the many outstanding questions in the wake of the Supreme Court's tariff ruling is what happens to all that money the government collected while those tariffs were in place? Tariffs, as you hear all the time on this program, because it's true, are a tax that is paid by American businesses and consumers.
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Chapter 7: How is the battery demand in the U.S. affected by tariffs?
And many consumers are now wondering, will we get any money back? Marketplace's Samantha Fields reports. Alex Niffin is not an economist or a lawyer or a trade expert. But I see the headlines, and the headlines tell me that consumers are bearing the significant brunt of it. It being the cost of tariffs. And I can tell you that's what it feels like when I go to the store, the grocery store, etc.
And now that the Supreme Court has struck the tariffs down, Niffin, a realtor in Connecticut, is wondering if he will get anything back.
It's easier to sort of figure out which businesses got hit with how much tariffs, but then taking that information and then actually figuring out, okay, well, you know, Alex and his family in Fairfield are due X from everything they spent, I think is going to be maddening. Chances are it won't happen, says Justin Wolfers at the University of Michigan.
Here's the reality. I bought a T-shirt from Target. I didn't pay the tariff directly. Target imported the T-shirt. Target paid the tariff.
So if the courts do require the federal government to unwind all of that and give tariff refunds, Wolfer says they would likely go to whoever paid the government. In this case, Target.
Target has no record of the fact that I walked into Target and bought that T-shirt.
So he says it's hard to see how the company would turn around and pay customers back for tariff-related price increases. There's also no guarantee businesses will get refunds. Mitchell Spitzik owns Little Things Toy Store in Brooklyn, New York, and he's skeptical.
I don't see it ever happening.
Spitzik imports about 90% of the toys and games he sells, much of it from China. And he has raised prices on lots of things because of tariffs.
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Chapter 8: What future challenges do businesses face in light of tariff uncertainties?
The Nasdaq dropped 258 points, 1.1% to finish at 22,627. And the S&P 500 fell 71 points, 1% to end at 68,37%. As I said, traders not happy on this day of more trade and AI anxiety. IBM shares sank today after Anthropic announced that its flawed code tool could quickly modernize the programming language used by IBM's computers. International business machines tanked 13.1%. Bonds rose.
The yield on the 10-year T-note fell to 4.03%. Flight to safety and all that? You're listening to Marketplace.
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This is Marketplace. I'm Amy Scott. The transition away from fossil fuels to renewable energy depends on batteries to store the power produced by the wind and sun for use when the wind isn't blowing or the sun isn't shining. And despite some challenges like tariffs and shifting federal energy policy that favors fossil fuels, U.S.
battery storage is expected to grow by more than 20 percent this year. That's one estimate from a new report by Benchmark Mineral Intelligence and the Solar Energy Industries Association. As Marketplace's Elizabeth Troval reports, it all comes down to our seemingly insatiable appetite for more electricity. For the lights to stay on, electricity supply and demand must always be balanced.
But maintaining that balance today comes with challenges. Mark Dyson is with RMI.
The demand for electricity is growing overall, driven by the growth of data centers. We're also seeing aging grid infrastructure have increasing impacts and electricity prices are rising across the board.
He says batteries are uniquely suited to address these problems.
I like to think of them as a Swiss army knife.
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