Supreme Court strikes down Trump's tariffs

President Trump had no legal right to impose many of those tariffs the way he did. I'm David Brancaccio in Los Angeles. The U.S. Supreme Court just ruled that the cornerstone of the president's tariff policy is illegal. The 6-3 ruling says the International Emergency Economic Powers Act is not designed for this. Among tariffs rendered illegal are the ones Trump announced last April on what he called Liberation Day. Marketplace's Nancy Marshall Genzer covers Washington. The tariffs now ruled illegal increased prices for consumers. A report from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York says U.S. businesses and consumers end up shouldering nearly 90 percent of the cost of all import taxes. Some businesses are vowing to go to court to get a refund. An enormous amount of money has been collected by the U.S. Treasury under these tariffs, which are now deemed illegal. We don't know yet if that money will be refunded, and if so, how. In the opinion, Justice Brett Kavanaugh notes that refunds, if it comes to that, would be an issue. He adds that, quote, refunds of billions of dollars would have significant consequences for the U.S. Treasury and the process would likely be a mess. I'm Nancy Marshall-Genzer for Marketplace. President Trump has other tools under law to reimpose some tariffs without prior consent of Congress, but at least one key strategy would need congressional approval after some months had passed. What a miss. The economy grew at less than half the rate expected as 2025 wound down. That's from today's calculation of gross domestic product, which grew at an annual rate of 1.4 percent in the October to December quarter when economists were expecting twice that. Christopher Lowe of FHN Financial. Government shutdown, in a nutshell, it's because we measure government activity based on the money they spend. And usually that works really well. But of course, with the government shutdown for half of the quarter and non workers literally not allowed to do any work but still paid for it well there was a big increase in spending that did not translate into production One of the most powerful players on Wall Street this is Goldman Sachs, is ditching its diversity criteria for its board, according to multiple published reports. There's pressure against these principles by the Trump administration, yet studies indicate that workplaces that include more women, people of color, LGBTQ people and those from other marginalized groups are more productive, innovative, and profitable. Here's Marketplace's Carla Javier. Carlos Chapman at SMU says a lot of the high-profile announcements and DEI rollbacks are kind of lightning rod headline generating activity. So instead of listening to what companies say, Atanuke Adediran at Fordham says watch what they do. Some are indeed backing away from diversity efforts. But in other cases... Companies are, you know, replacing words like equity with belonging, inclusion, etc. Companies are making these moves because they're afraid that the federal government will retaliate against them if they don't. Mae McDonald at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School says that threat... It introduces direct costs that I think scares a lot of companies from being vocal and scares a lot of shareholders from being vocal in this space right now. Some shareholders have pressed companies to abandon diversity initiatives, but others see value in them. McDonald says even in this environment, pro-DEI shareholders... Can have conversations behind closed doors with board leaders. Companies that are trying to navigate these waters have a lot of conflicting forces to take into consideration, says John Solorzano of Vinson & Elkins, who consults firms on DEI issues. You're trying to avoid being kind of targeted by the federal government, but at the same time, you're also not trying to be boycotted by your core customer base or consumer base. And then there have been some pretty high-profile companies that have been targeted both on the left and the right. which Solarzano says puts companies in an impossible position I Carla Javier for Marketplace These days, my Los Angeles neighborhood runs thick with driverless Waymo taxis. There was an empty one creepily staring at me on my street when I left the house in the wee hours today. Fully self-driving cars are operating in more than two dozen states, but federal rules have not kept up. Now federal lawmakers are weighing multiple bills focused on safety. Julia Picard has the story. Last December, during a power outage in San Francisco, an observer filmed lines of Waymo robotaxis stopped in their tracks and posted it to social media. Someone's going to set this thing on fire if it doesn't move you. Traffic lights, which guide the self-driving cars, had gone dark. Not knowing what else to do, the cars just bricked. Autonomous vehicles, or AVs, have been picking up passengers on the streets of San Francisco since 2022. Jeffrey Tumlin led San Francisco's transportation agency. He says the rollout was chaos. AVs driving straight into emergency response scenes because they didn't know what a fire truck or a fire hose really was. AVs driving into construction sites and into wet cement. Tomlin says before AVs scale further, they need to prove they can safely handle real-world complexity. And lawmakers in Washington agree. Multiple bills are being debated in Congress. Here's Senator Ted Cruz in early February. Without federal oversight, we risk a fragmented patchwork of state laws that could undermine safety, innovation, and American competitiveness. Federal regulation for vehicle design, construction, and performance already exist. They just haven't been updated for AVs. Federal regulation would require AV companies to submit a safety case showing Clear documentation and evidence that you follow the process and that you can articulate what the system is designed to do and that it has been validated for doing what it was designed to do. Matthew Wood is the vice president of autonomy, integrity, and validation at the AV company May Mobility. He says engineers already use safety cases, but federal regulation would make them consistent, mandatory, and enforceable. That means defining how a vehicle minimizes risk when something unexpected happens, from a sensor failure to a power outage or a protest in the street. What should the vehicle do if it doesn't know what to do? But even with federal safety requirements, city streets are still absorbing the steep learning curve of self-driving cars. As A-B companies strive to prove they're safe, it's worth mentioning. Human drivers kill over 40,000 people a year in the U.S. Whether federal regulation can reduce that toll without creating new risks is the question. I'm Julia Picard for Marketplace. Again, there's news the economy grew at an annual rate of just 1.4% last quarter compared to 4.4% in the summer. It's the Marketplace Morning Report from APM American Public Media. America's housing system is under strain from natural disasters to the rising cost of shelter. The challenges we face and the solutions we embrace will shape how we live for the next hundred years. I'm David Brancaccio, host of the Marketplace Morning Report, and I've been working with This Old House Radio Hour on a special podcast episode that explores how Americans are reimagining housing in this changing world. It's called Building Tomorrow. From wildfire-resistant houses in California to tiny home communities in Texas to a super-duper energy-efficient house in the Northeast, this special blends innovation, new business models, and personal stories to explore how resilience, affordability, and our climate reality are redefining what home looks like. To listen, go to Marketplace Morning Report in your podcast app.