Trump dusts off obscure legal authority for new tariffs

There is fresh uncertainty after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the lion's share of Trump administration tariffs. I'm David Brancaccio in Los Angeles. President Trump is moving to impose a 15 percent global tariff now, claiming legal authority that grants him power to do so for 150 days. And there are other tariff tools as well. Marketplace's Nova Safo reports. The latest tariffs keep higher levies mostly in place for now, despite the Supreme Court's ruling. The Yale Budget Lab says the effective rate on the whole now averages 13.7 percent, down from 16 percent. The new tariffs are under a statutory authority known as Section 122 that no president has previously invoked, and they must be temporary. Treasury Secretary Scott Besson told CNN's State of the Union that the administration will likely impose other tariffs under more commonly used authorities, but those take longer to implement. I think it's highly likely that those tariffs will rise up and that the 122s could disappear after five months. There's also the option of asking Congress to enact higher tariffs, but the administration has not signaled any willingness to do so. I'm Novosaf for Marketplace. The proposed new 15 percent global tariff talked about over the weekend does have carve outs, including for Mexico and Canada. So the import tax situations in those countries would be unchanged. For businesses and markets, the fog has rolled back in, the fog of uncertainty. Economist Julia Coronado is founder and president of Macro Policy Perspectives and a professor at the University of Texas Austin Remember that the lifting of the fog was supposed to be a tailwind for the U economy this year that we'd made some deals and the dust was settling and now we've kicked up all the dust all over again. So the market doesn't quite know what to do with it, but it certainly is another risk factor to add to the list. Gold is up quite resolutely. That's a hedge. Yes, I think one of the reactions to policy chaos in the U.S. has been to seek safe havens. That's been a reliable trend. And that certainly seems to remain in place on this news. Well, here's a note of certainty. U.S. Customs and Border Protection says it'll halt collections of tariffs imposed under the Emergency Economic Powers Act. 12.01 a.m. Eastern on Tuesday. So they're halting collections. That's a tangible thing. And it will take at least a few days to impose the new set of tariffs under the new guidelines and the new legal rationale. And then, of course, we have hundreds of billions of dollars in refunds to process, which is not likely to happen quickly. So lots of moving parts to this evolving trade strategy. Economist Julia Coronado, Macro Policy Perspectives. Thank you very much. My pleasure. The Prime Minister of Spain has plans for his government to give legal status to about half a million migrants who are in Spain illegally The move is designed to boost the country's workforce in economic sectors that have been growing but have struggled to recruit workers. The BBC's Ashish Sharma reports from Madrid. The areas of strong growth have been in tourism, hospitality and construction. Yet these are the sectors in which many Spanish people are not so keen to work in, due to lower wages and temporary contracts. In order to keep these engines of the economy roaring, Spain wants to utilise its migrant population. Another reason is that Spain has an ageing population, with one of the slowest birth rates in Europe. One day, around 4am, he had the idea to eat fish and chips. He googled fish and chips in Barcelona, there was none. So we said, OK, we need to open one. We are born in Pakistan, British ex-colony, so we have fish and chips in, how to say, childhood. From opening one restaurant 10 years ago, Mani and his brother Majad Alam today run 22 restaurants in Barcelona and Madrid. They're mainly fish and chip shops, with the food having an extra taste based on Pakistani spices, they add. But they also run a Pakistani and an Indian restaurant. Being Spanish nationals, they have no problem setting up their restaurants. But Mani says it's a different story when it comes to hiring staff. There's no people who want to work in hospitality. This is one of the first things to solve A lot of times we have people with good experience with no papers They come in the door with their CV and you have the interview everything goes good until the last part and then they say, I have no papers. Obviously, we can't hire them because it's illegal. Sometimes we contract, no? We did like twice, no? Oferta de contrato, like a contract. To become legal first, to take it. You have to become legal and then you can hire them. It takes six months, so how people can survive six months in Madrid or Barcelona without any payment, not really possible. What would be your message then to someone like Pedro Sanchez? To make easier the process, they get papers and start working in short time. For me, it's easy. The Spanish government's legalisation announcement has been criticised by its opponents. The far-right Vox Party says this is the beginning of the loss of Spain's cultural identity. The Partido Popular warns of the wider impact for the European Union. The process for legalisation is set to begin in April. But given how burdensome Spain's bureaucracy has been so far for migrants and asylum seekers, Many who are expected to benefit from this are understandably wary of just how quickly their status will be resolved.