Jon Decker talks the future of tariffs

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
John Decker joins, is now our White House corres. I
want to talk about the future of the tariffs happening now. John,
welcome in.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
Hey, it's good to be with you. JT. Hope you're
doing well and had a great weekend.

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Excellent myself, how about you as well?

Speaker 2 (00:11):
It was very good. Good to be back at it.
It's going to be a busy week at the White House,
I have no doubt about it.

Speaker 1 (00:16):
Well, it's been a busy news cycle. You've got Ukraine
and Russia still fighting in the midst of peace talks
going on, the big beautiful bill now being discussed in
the Senate. They're going to wrestle with it all week long.
And then you've got the attack, the terrorist attack that
took place over the weekend in Colorado. Tariffs seemed to
take a back burner position recently here. So after some
legal setbacks on all of this, what's President planning to

(00:39):
impose and what's he going to be doing moving forward with.

Speaker 2 (00:42):
All these Well, the President on Wednesday is set to
double the tariffs that he's imposing on foreign steel and
aluminum to fifty percent. That he says we'll better protect
domestic metal makers. Right here, in the States. In the meantime,
as you know, there's a paw in terms of whether
or not the president can impose tariffs, those reciprocal tariffs.

(01:06):
What a federal appeals court has decided is to allow
those tariffs to go forward. I think this will ultimate
lead JT. This issue concerning the reciprocal tariffs will ultimately
be decided by the highest court in Land, the US
Supreme Court, and I would certainly expect that to be
done on a fast track basis given some of the

(01:26):
deadlines that we're talking about here. Those reciprocal tariffs, they're
on pause, as you know, until early July, and I
would not be surprised if we see an emergency appeal
to the Supreme Court concerning that before that early July deadline.

Speaker 1 (01:41):
Well, we've seen the Great Negotiator works some magic so far,
starting with Canada and Mexico, and then we saw some
other countries bouncing around. China came back a little bit,
So there's some good coming out of all of this.
Where are the nations right now that seem to be
the biggest bone of contention for Donald Trump.

Speaker 2 (01:58):
Well, I think what countries around the world are doing
is essentially doing a wait and see approach to see
what happens in the federal courts and whether President Trump
has the authority to unilaterally impose these tariffs that he
has imposed. That's the reason why the only big announcement
concerning a trade deal has been with the UK. That
was nearly a month ago. Since that time, we haven't

(02:21):
seen a big event happening at the White House with
another country, whether it's South Korea, or India or Japan.
I think that each of these countries are waiting to
see what the federal courts, maybe even the US Supreme
Court decides, concerning the president's authority to impose these terrifts
before they move forward and cut a trade deal with
the US.

Speaker 1 (02:40):
You're a member of the Supreme Court, bar John an
attorney yourself. Do you see some of these things justly
being thrown in his roadblock arena there in that he
likes to do this and move forward quick. He hates
the Dillydalli and so he just says, let's do it.
And then all of a sudden he says, all right, well,
let's do it, but oh does Congression help, and that

(03:02):
they need to weigh in on most of these things.
Including the deportation issue as well.

Speaker 2 (03:06):
Well. That's something entirely different than the teriff issue. The
deportation issue is an authority that the president has. I
think that we've spoken about this for I think, and
I've actually spoken to Tom Homan about this, just a
one on one conversation. The President has the authority to
go about his mass deportation program. I think that unnecessarily
they've created some issues for themselves by relying on this

(03:30):
law that hasn't really been used all that much over
the course of the history of our country, the Alien
Enemies Act. The President can certainly cite other authorities to
go about his mass deportation program without relying on that
particular law, and I think that you know, what we're
going to see is the court's likely weighing in on that.
In the meantime, the court, various courts have ruled against

(03:51):
the President concerning the president's authority to unilaterally impose these tariffs,
but the ones related to imported steel and aluminum, they're
allowing that to go through, and that certainly is going
to impact China, which dumps a lot of steel and
illuminum in our country, and also the EU as well.

(04:12):
They're going to be hurt hard by those tariffs that
the president will impose in just two days.

Speaker 1 (04:16):
Yeah, the Supreme Court has been quite busy during this
administration so far. And Yeah, it doesn't look like there's
any end inside. John Decker, always good to catch up
with you. Thank you for the update.