As major stock market indexes tanked Monday morning following President Donald Trump’s announcement that he would raise tariffs, the president took to Truth Social.
“The supreme court (will be using lower case letters for a while based on a complete lack of respect!) of the United States accidentally and unwittingly gave me, as President of the United States, far more powers and strength than I had prior to their ridiculous, dumb, and very internationally divisive ruling,” said Trump. He was referring to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 6-3 Friday ruling that the president did not have the authority to enact the International Emergency Economic Powers Act IEEPA tariffs he put in place last year.
Shortly after the ruling was announced, Trump declared that he would implement a 10% global tariff. NBC News noted that he implemented those under Section 122 of the 1974 Trade Act, a different law than the one addressed by the court’s ruling. Then, he announced he would raise that tariff to 15%.
“Despite the revised level, Trump’s universal tariff will still result in a major cut to tariffs applied to most key trading partners. For some, it would remain the same,” said NBC.
In his Monday post, Trump went on to say that he “can use Licenses to do absolutely “terrible” things to foreign countries, especially those countries that have been RIPPING US OFF for many decades, but incomprehensibly, according to the ruling, can’t charge them a License fee.”
“The court has also approved all other Tariffs, of which there are many, and they can all be used in a much more powerful and obnoxious way, with legal certainty, than the Tariffs as initially used,” he added. “Our incompetent supreme court did a great job for the wrong people, and for that they should be ashamed of themselves.”
While Trump has refused to give up on his tariff plans, polls have shown that most Americans don’t support them. Research has shown that most of them have actually been paid by U.S. consumers and businesses, not foreign countries.
“All it is, is just a tax on the consumer, right?” said Detroit Axle CEO Mike Musheinesh, who has been an outspoken critic of the tariffs, told WWJ Newsradio this week. “Once upon a time, we’ll import a million dollars worth of merchandise and we’ll pay the federal government $25,000 in tariffs. And now for that same million dollars in merchandise, we’re paying the federal governments $725,000,” he explained.
With the global tariff announcements, U.S. stock futures also fell Monday, according to CNBC. It said Dow Jones Industrial Average futures dropped 219 points and that S&P 500 futures and Nasdaq-100 futures “slid 0.4% and 0.6%, respectively.”
Investopedia reported Monday morning that major stock indexes “tanked,” and that Bitcoin fell. Gold, however, was up amid heightening market uncertainty, per CNBC.
“Wall Street is coming off a choppy trading session,” said the outlet. “On Friday, stocks initially rallied after the Supreme Court struck down a broad swath of Trump’s trade agenda, before pulling back and then ultimately recovering again. Investors hoped the Supreme Court ruling would soothe tensions between the U.S. and its trading partners and lead to possible refunds to companies affected by the tariffs.”
However, it noted that the European Commission said in a statement Saturday that “the current situation is not conducive to delivering ‘fair, balanced, and mutually beneficial’ transatlantic trade and investment.”
As for U.S. businesses and consumers, Musheinesh told WWJ said: “I don’t know how this is supposed to drive economic activity when you’re taking money out of the consumer’s hands.”