Trump’s Tariffs Struck Down – What it Means to the Economy & To You – Top 3 Takeaways

It’s been 224 days since Donald Trump once again became President of the United States. If there’s been anything you could count on any given day (even on holidays), it’s that some (commonly left-wing) interest group is suing his administration...and often two. As of today, there have been 384 lawsuits filed against Team Trump’s administration for an average of greater than 1.7 new lawsuits per day.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to the Brian Mount Show, and thank you for listening.
It's time for today's top three takeaways. Helpful, useful, repeatable.
Trump's tariffs struck down, what it means to the economy
and to you. My top three takeaways as we get
back from the Labor Day weekend today. Hope you had
a nice one. My top takeaway for you now, it's

(00:27):
a big one. It's a big one. Talking about this
whole tariff ruling right as we are getting ready to
ride into the Labor Day weekend. Foxes Lucas Tomlinson taking
a look at that Friday ruling, the.

Speaker 2 (00:39):
US Court of Appeals here in Washington delivered a blow
to the President's tariff plan. President Trump, responding on True
Social Quote, all tariffs are.

Speaker 1 (00:47):
Still in effect today.

Speaker 2 (00:48):
A highly partisan appeals court incorrectly said that our tariffs
should be removed. But they know the United States of
America will win in the end. If these tariffs ever
went away, it would be a total disaster for them.

Speaker 1 (01:01):
Yeah. So, like I said, a big one. Right now,
it's been two hundred and twenty four days since Donald
Trump once again became President of the United States, and
if there's been anything you could count on any given day,
even on holidays, it's been that some commonly left wing

(01:21):
interest group is suing the Trump administration, often two. As
of today, there have been three hundred and eighty four
lawsuits filed against Team Trump's administration, for an average of
greater than one point seven new lawsuits per day. You
know the three things you can count on in a

(01:41):
given day, sunrise, subtle set, left wingers will suit Trump.
That's what goes on now. Suing has become like the
new form of law fare by the left. Also aided
by having a majority of Democrat appointed judges in federal courts, well,
they have been highly effective in getting at least some

(02:02):
kind of temporary victory until decisions have been heard by
higher courts upon appeal. I mean, and when I talked
about even on holidays, by the way, I mean yesterday,
so Labor Day, we had a plane full of Guatemala
and children that were set to be sent to their parents,

(02:23):
to their parents who are not in the United States.
These kids that had been smuggled into the United States,
so we were going to deport them to their parents.
And you had a left wing group su and a judge. Yeah,
you can't send these kids back to their parents due process,
due process for five and six year olds? Are you

(02:45):
kidding me? They're better off setting somewhere and some legal
setting and some immigration facility than with their parents. I mean,
but that's what goes on like every single day in
this country, even on holidays. In total, out of the
three hundred and eighty four lawsuits, how many do you

(03:08):
think have led to the president's policy permanently being blocked?
I mean, just absolute one hundred percent losses for the
Trump administration three hundred and eighty four lawsuits. One number
comes to mind, Joel happens to be pointing in the
right direction here.

Speaker 3 (03:27):
Yeah, I figured it was double digits, but a little
lower than what the actual figure is.

Speaker 1 (03:33):
It's twenty five. And then the grand scheme of things.
I mean, that is pretty low, it is, it is, so, Yeah,
only twenty five have been absolute losses in the end
for Trump. You do have an additional seventy seven that
have led to some kind of temporary block of Trump's
agenda that's still in place, eighteen that are currently penning appeal. Okay,

(03:56):
So in other words, if you were to apply everything
that is still outstanding and so you know what, Trump
loses that even then Trump's agenda is held up to
legal scrutiny sixty nine percent of the time. This far
his win rate even on the most conservative then sixty

(04:18):
nine percent. That pretty darn good, pretty darn good. Doesn't
doesn't come across that way, does it. The way things
are reporting the news certainly doesn't sound like that. You
hear about all the legal We've seen this for years
in Florida too, because we have the left wing you know,
Obama and Biden appointed judges that are federal judges over Florida.

(04:38):
So like anytime there's anything that matters in the state
of Florida, you have the left wing interest groups that sue,
and then you'll get Walker goes, yeah, yeah, what, yeah,
I mean it was passed by Republicans, right, strike that
thing down, and then you get all, oh, federal judge,
federal judge trucked out everything in Florida. Decentis is an

(04:59):
evil man. I think that in his opinion, you get
things like that, right, we get it all, and then
what ends up happening policy stands and then you don't
even hear a report of the news. It's crickets and
did that mean that DeSantis and Republicans are inherently evil
as well? Since it was overturned.

Speaker 3 (05:19):
I just wonder.

Speaker 1 (05:21):
Joel's been laughing.

Speaker 3 (05:22):
At I'm trying to remember when one of judges, Mark Walker, right,
well one of you is one of his rulings, actually
said he's just one of evil.

Speaker 1 (05:31):
He's just one of three penheads. He's he's gotten colorful
in his opinions. I mean, obviously, I'm yeah, I know,
I know, I'm just being facetious to an extent, but
he comes close. He has been awfully feisty. And this
is an administration that has a history of evilness, not orangeness.

(05:52):
I can't accuse him of that, but evilness. So anyway,
Trump's win rate sixteen nine percent really sawid win rate.
A few of the legal decisions that have been rendered
today carry anywhere near the way that the Federal Appeals
Court's ruling on Friday, as we were getting ready for
the Labor Day weekend could have brought about. So the

(06:14):
three page order with a one hundred and twenty seven
page opinion issued by the Federal Appeals Court said this,
I'm summarizing here. The case involves the extent of the
obviously of the president's authority under and they cite the
law that the president used from the seventies to put
most of the tariffs in place, but said the extent

(06:36):
of the president's authority under that law to regulate importation
in response to a national emergency declared by the president.
For many years, Congress has carefully constructed tariff schedules which
provide for in great detail, the tariffs to be imposed
on particular goods. Since taking office, President Donald J. Trump
has declared several national emergencies, and response to those declared egencies,

(07:00):
the President has departed from the established tariff schedules and
imposed varying tariffs of unlimited duration on imports of nearly
all goods from nearly every country with which the United
States conducts trade. The Constitution grants Congress the power to
lay and collect taxes, duties, imports, and exercises, and to
regulate commerce with foreign nations. Tariffs are a tax, and

(07:23):
the framers of the Constitution expressly contemplated the exclusive grants
of taxing power to the legislative branch. Okay, so that
in the nutshell is their argument. Now the Court, in
a much warterier fashion then went on to say that
only tariff powers expressly granted to the president unilaterally were
lawfully imposed. So what did that mean? Well, my second

(07:46):
takeaway today, most of President Trump's tariffs are struck down.
I'm going to break that down here momentarily. First, on this,
you had Peter Navarro commenting over the weekend, he's an
advisor to the president.

Speaker 4 (08:00):
Was weaponized partisan injustice at its worst. Politicians in Black Groves.
You had six out of the seven judges Democrats, but
you also had twelve blue states intervening against Trump.

Speaker 1 (08:15):
Right, So let's take a look at this without getting
overly wonky and too far into the weeds of policy.
It's like this, Currently, sixty nine percent of all goods
imported into the US have some sort of tariff being
I posed on them as part of President Trump's expressed
reciprocal trade policy. So should this ruling hold, that number
would drop to only sixteen percent. Okay, so right now,

(08:38):
sixty nine percent stuff coming into the US tariffs. This
holds only sixteen percent, So in other words, only twenty
three percent, or just under a quarter, of President Trump's
tariffs would remain in effect. That is a huge hit
to his trade strategy. It's a huge amount of leverage
that'd be removed from the equation from President Trump's ability

(08:59):
to pose his Art of the Deal on trade policy.
Now Here are three important things to know going forward. One,
nothing has changed as of today. The Appeals Court stayed
their ruling until October fourteenth, anticipating that Trump administration's appealed
to the United States Supreme Court, which was immediately in
motion following Friday's ruling. So for the next six weeks

(09:22):
and least, that is, unless the Supreme Court works sooner
on this, it will be status quo tariffs paid for
all of the stuff imported into the country.

Speaker 3 (09:32):
Two.

Speaker 1 (09:34):
It's possible President Trump wins before the Supreme Court in
the end, but then let's say he doesn't. That takes
us to three. It's possible President Trump could focus on
the types of tariffs that the Appeals Court said we're
legal for Trump to act on unilaterally significantly raising tariffs
in those categories to attempt to achieve a similar overall effect,
although it wouldn't be as evenly effective because so many

(09:57):
of our trading partners don't even trade, and the categories
like steel, for example, that are still in place with us,
and this takes us to my third takeaway today about implications.
Here is US Treasury Secretary of Scott descent talking about
the tariff decision.

Speaker 5 (10:14):
President Trump, myself, the economic team in the Cabinet believe
that we are close to a tipping point where we
could have financial instability due to these large and persistent
trade deficits. So we are trying to head off a crisis.

Speaker 1 (10:30):
Okay, so for now, there's likely to be a lot
of trade inbo I mean, why, for example, if you're
a foreign trading partner, what do you assign some kind
of a permanent trade of cord when it's possible that
very soon most of the leverage President Trump has used
two exact outcomes could be removed. So we've likely seen
the last of meaningful trade policy changes until the Supreme

(10:51):
Court weighs in on this. Big implications could also exist
with inventories maintained by importers. Why, for example, would you
place normal orders for inputed goods if in a matter
of weeks you could just order the same stuff for
considerably less. So for that reason, it's possible businesses run
super tight inventories over the next month plus as they

(11:13):
wait to see what's going to happen here, and that
could mean we could even see shortages of goods in
certain categories based on the level of demand and decisions
that are made by businesses in the coming weeks. The
other significant impact could come in the form of the
Federal Reserve's interest rate policy. Ninety percent of investors are
now priced in an expected decrease in interest rates when

(11:34):
the FED meets on policy later this month, But based
on Federal Reserve Chairman Trump Powell's previous commentary, it is
rather clear that the Fed would have already cut rates
if the tariff policies weren't in place, So it appears
unlikely that the Supreme Court will have ruled by the
Fed's meeting at the end of the month, But basedupon

(11:54):
how the Fed feels about this, there could be the
potential for interest rates to come down in the large
size cuts, or at least that we could see rates
come down progressively in coming months and future meetings. Friday's
ruling have a profound impact on all aspects of the
US economy, foreign trade policy, and revenues to the Treasury Department.
In other words, it'll have a profound impact on you

(12:18):
one way or another,