Trump Likely to Find Other Ways to Continue Tariff Agenda: Economist

President Trump raised tariffs on all countries to 15 percent Saturday, up from 10 percent a day earlier. The increase follows the Supreme Court's ruling against the global tariffs his administration imposed in 2025 under the International Emergency Economics Powers Act, or IEPA. Joining us now to discuss is economist Michael Bussler, a professor of finance at Stockton University. Good to have you with us, Michael. The Treasury Secretary, Scott Besant, said the Supreme Court's ruling did not say the president couldn't impose tariffs. Rather, he couldn't use IEPA. Trump and Besant said tariffs would remain in effect and 2026 revenue would remain unchanged through the use of several other provisions, that's Section 122 authority, combined with potentially enhanced Section 232 and Section 301 tariffs. Can you explain these alternative pathways? OK, so when Trump got into office, he wanted to renegotiate all these very lopsided trade agreements. So the other countries didn't want to renegotiate. So they said, look, I'm going to put tariffs on you, extremely high tariffs. And if you don't renegotiate, I'm going to keep them on. So most of the large countries, the European Union, most of the large countries renegotiated new trade deals. So now the Supreme Court said, well, listen, you can't use tariffs like that. So the question is, what's going to happen to these trade deals? So one of two things can happen. Either the countries say, look, we've negotiated this, we'll keep what we have here, or they're going to say, listen, you told us you're going to put on tariffs. If we don't sign the agreement, you can't put on the tariffs. So that agreement we signed is null and void. So they can either keep it or not. If they don't keep it, so what did Trump do? Under one of those laws you mentioned, he can put up to a 15 percent tariff on all countries, which is what he did. Now, that can only be done for 150 days. At the end of the 150 days, he has to get Congress to approve the tariffs. Congress will never approve the tariffs. Republicans don't have a large enough majority because none of the Democrats will vote for it. And even some of the Republicans don't like it. So he'll never get congressional approval. So now he's going to use the second law that you mentioned. That says if the Commerce Department investigates a country and finds out there's an unfair trade practice, then the president can impose a tariff. So in that 150 days that he's put on the tariff, he's going to have countries investigated by the Commerce Department. And when they deem it was an unfair trade practice that they've been using for decades, then he'll be allowed to put a tariff on. And essentially that has been the reasoning for most, if not all of the tariffs in that slew of tariffs that the president has implemented. So we'll be waiting to see, but assume that we may find that it has been uneven. The Supreme Court didn't mention anything about refunding the collected tariffs. Over 1,000 companies have now filed suit, though. So what happens with those collected funds? That's going to get tied up in court, I think, for a long time. The reason is you can't tell exactly who paid the tariff. If the price of something went up by some amount and the supplier said it's because of the tariff, maybe it was and maybe it wasn't. And then how much of the price increase was due to the tariff. Then consumers paid some of the tariff. Well, how are you going to give them back? How are you going to figure out how much they spent? So coming up with who actually paid the tariffs is extremely difficult. What we do know is with all the tariffs being imposed, there was not a significant impact on the overall inflation rate. When President Trump came into office, the inflation rate, as measured by the Consumer Price Index, was 2.9 percent. A year later, it's down to 2.4 percent. So it doesn't look like the tariffs really had any significant impact on increasing inflation. And on the good side, President Trump has negotiated better trade deals. Most importantly, foreign markets are now open to U.S. manufacturers. The reason these old trade agreements were so lopsided is we charged only a 2.5 percent tariff to most countries. They charged us 20, 30, 50. Indy was charging 100 percent tariffs. That meant the U.S. couldn't sell their goods in those countries. And that's why we have such a nearly a trillion dollar annual trade deficit. Now, with these agreements, foreign markets are opening up to U.S. suppliers, especially in agricultural industry. And you'll see the trade deficit shrink and the economy grow. OK, so lastly, the most high profile company that joined the suit against Trump's tariffs is Costco. Most of the other largest retailers have not yet joined, including Amazon, Walmart, Target, Home Depot, Lowe's, Walgreens, CVS, you name it. Why don't you think they joined in? Because it's going to take years to figure out how much you actually paid. And even if you win in court, it'll get appealed and then it'll go up to the Supreme Court to say, well, the Supreme Court said we can't tariff anymore. But what about the tariff we already had in place? What do we do with the money? Who knows how they're going to decide? Kavanaugh, in the dissenting opinion, was very emphatic in noting that trying to return this money is a nearly impossible task. So I think the other retailers said, listen, it's not that much money and we're not sure we're going to get it anyway. And rather than all this litigation, let's concentrate on improving our business. Right. OK, it's all in the name of business. OK, thank you so much, Michael Bessler. Good to speak with you. Thank you.