Trump tariffs struck down by SCOTUS, financial analyst examines the fallout

FOX 2 - President Donald Trump expected to impose a new global 10% tariff after the Supreme Court found the tariffs he imposed under an emergency powers law were unconstitutional. 

The backstory:

"My opinion that the court has been swayed by foreign interests and a political movement that is far smaller than people would ever think," Trump said. "But it doesn't matter because we have very powerful alternatives that have been approved by this decision. 

The president's comments reflect those of top administration officials who said shortly after the ruling they intend to keep the tariff structure in place. Many are wondering if this will indeed be passed on to the consumer and about the power of the court.

This involves $133 billion in collected tariff revenues. And so the question is, how is that going to be refunded, if that needs to happen.

We're also talking about $190 billion in collected duties just last year. This is all against an economic backdrop where we see a slowing economy price economic pressures, which according to economists, might ease up, but not immediately. 

FOX 2 spoke with someone who was formerly a fellow with the White House Council on Economic Advisers Rebecca Homkes, who had interesting things to say about this. 

Hilary Golston, FOX 2: "Economic data that we are looking at is lagging, and it probably will take some time for this ruling to be priced into what's happening on the markets, but the markets haven't been spooked by this. In fact, they're slightly up. GDP, though we know, was down to about 1.4% annualized, which was not what analysts were expecting. What sort of economic broader from a broader perspective do you see the implications going forward?

"Such a great question because we have all of these different factors coming together," she said. "Now, Q4 GDP was around where I estimated, but remember we had the longest shutdown in government history in Q4, which is really going to skew the numbers. 

"If you're looking for bright spots in the GDP number, consumer spending remained relatively robust. So there is a little bit of good news takeaway, but we are not seeing this large economic boom that many had forecasted. I never thought we'd really see over two. We might expect some revisions." 

FOX 2: "It's not just these, the emergency powers under IEEPA that President Trump was using, but other ways of levying tariffs and certainly he has some exemptions as well that are still in there. What other means that the Trump administration has to continue its tariff policy in some form?"

"Well, buckle up is what I would say," said Homkes.  "Because there are many other means that the administration has, but they are all limited. So there's about five or six other executive orders or statutes that allow the executive branch of the government to issue things like tariffs. However, IEEPA was used because it's the most broadest and allowed the administration to do things in one sweep, as we saw. The other statutes that they will use have to be much more targeted."