How’s this for spin: After the Supreme Court struck down his sweeping "reciprocal" tariffs, President Donald Trump declared “great certainty has been brought back to the economy of the United States.” Then he slapped a new 10% import tax on the rest of the world.

 

In today’s newsletter, we’ll look at what this ruling and the White House’s reaction actually mean for the economy and your wallet. We’ve also got new data on inflation and economic growth, plus stories on self-driving cars and the state of DEI. Have a great weekend. — Catie McCarthy, digital producer and Tony Wagner, newsletter editor

The Supreme Court invalidated as much as $175 billion in tariffs this morning.

 

President Donald Trump's import tax hikes roiled the global economy, though the New York Fed found they were borne by American consumers and companies. Trump's trade policy largely rested on the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, and the justices rejected the White House’s interpretation of that law today.

 

Yale Budget Lab has been tracking the economic impact of these tariffs since Trump’s “Liberation Day” announcement last year, and executive director Martha Gimbel joined “Marketplace” host Kai Ryssdal today to talk about what comes next. Find excerpts of their conversation below, edited for space.

 

 

I certainly feel less certain about tariffs than I felt this morning. 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 where he said 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.

 

Let's say we stayed at 15%. Macroeconomically, what do you suppose happens?

 

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. 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, and you're going to raise a lot of revenue. So it's, in some ways, not that different than what we've been talking about before today. 

 

 

No, and I should say that [Treasury] Secretary [Scott] Bessent was out there today saying that they don't think that refunds are going out. In general, this is something the Supreme Court left kind of open, and it's going to be messy. If you are a business who has already raised your prices, passing tariffs on to consumers — yes, tariffs may have temporarily come off, but it looks like tariffs are going back on, right? Why would you adjust your prices? So for the consumer, this is not necessarily good news.

Fully self-driving cars are already operating in more than two dozen states, but federal rules haven’t kept up. Congress debated federal regulation on autonomous vehicles earlier this month, which would include consistent guidelines on how AVs should react to power outages, protests and other unexpected hazards.

The National Park Service laid off 1,000 employees just over a year ago, exacerbating staffing problems ahead of the busy season and causing some parks to cut services. Now SFGATE reports at least 40 job offers have been revoked, leaving prospective employees feeling “betrayed.”  The news comes a month after some of the most popular National Parks instituted a fee for international visitors up to $100 a person. Where’s that money going?