Fallout from the Supreme Court's tariff decision

A new data-driven analysis finds immigrants are a net positive for the U.S. Treasury. I'm David Brancaccio in Los Angeles. First, we're coming up on 72 hours since the Supreme Court determined the Trump administration did not have legal authority for a sweeping package of tariffs. These were the ones imposed unilaterally and globally using the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEPA. But this ruling does not apply to all import taxes. and the president at first said he'll now apply a 10 percent global tariff, then raised his number to 15 percent. Here's Marketplace's Mitchell Hartman. Even though the administration's biggest bucket of import taxes has been thrown out, Michael Strain at the American Enterprise Institute says, There are other laws under which President Trump has tariffs. Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 allows tariffs in response to unfair trade practices still in place against China. And Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962. Tariffs on goods with a national security justification, really high on aluminum, car parts, steel, copper, lumber. And, says Robert McClelland at the Urban Brookings Tax Policy Center. There are still a number of active investigations on aircraft, industry machinery, medical equipment, wind turbines, and drones. Which could lead to additional tariffs. Summing it all up, Martha Gimbel at the Yale Budget Lab says, Some of the tariffs that have been in the news a lot that President Trump has put in place on a whim for lack of a better phrasing have been removed Which reduced the average effective tariff rate on foreign imports from around 16 percent before the Supreme Court decision down to 9 percent But according to the Yale Budget Lab, President Trump's new Section 122 tariffs ratchet that back up, at least for the next 150 days, to 13.7 percent. I'm Mitchell Hartman for Marketplace. Companies and consumers will have to figure out if they'll sue to get money back for money paid on tariffs deemed illegal. And U.S. trading partners around the world are also recalculating strategy. The BBC's Felicity Hanna has more. India says it will now delay plans to send a delegation to Washington this week to finalize an interim trade deal. And the European Union meets today to decide whether to freeze its ratification of last year's trade deal with the U.S. China says it's making a full assessment and has called for all US tariffs to be cancelled, adding that, in its view, a trade war benefits no one. Meanwhile, the UK, which previously negotiated a 10% tariff deal, may be one of the few major economies facing higher tariffs than before. I'm the BBC's Felicity Hanna for Marketplace. Thank you All economic classes collectively put more into the United States than they cost Fewer immigrants according to this new analysis hurt the fiscal health of the U The source of this new study is notable, the Cato Institute, a think tank that often aligns with conservative economic policies but has a consistently libertarian focus. A co-author of the study is David Beer, director of immigration studies at Cato. Good morning. Thanks for having me on. Broad brush, the presence of immigrants helps ease the federal budget deficit? Absolutely. The biggest finding is that immigrants have generated a cumulative $14.5 trillion in real 2024 dollars in deficit reductions over the last 30 years. Now, you know, immigrants is a huge class of people who moved here. What happens if the question is, do undocumented immigrants, people in the U.S. without permission illegally, does that calculation hold up? If you look at just their net benefit, it's about $1.7 trillion. And what's really going on there is that illegal immigrants are largely excluded from the biggest public benefits programs. And those are Social Security and Medicare. And unless a person is being paid, quote, under the table, they may be paying into those systems. Right There are some people who just get paid under the table They aren paying in as much as a legal immigrant is but they are paying taxes particularly at the state and local level And even if we look at just federal income taxes a majority of the illegal immigrant population is paying taxes particularly at the state and local level And even if we look at just federal income taxes a majority of the illegal immigrant population is on the books They are paying into that system, and then they're not drawing that benefit out later when they retire. David, help me understand, I remember a line in the report that if immigrant workers were earning lower wages per hour, they can still pay more in taxes than the average person? Yeah. So even though they earn lower wages, because they work so many more hours, they end up paying more in taxes than their share of the population would predict. Now, I mean, I saw that line in the paper. Even by this conservative analysis, immigrants may have already prevented a fiscal crisis. Can we move that forward? Can we extrapolate from that finding that an America with stricter immigration policies, the ones now in place, does that suggest the fiscal health of the country will get worse? Absolutely, yes. If we end up in a situation where we cut off immigration, our working age population would go into decline before our retiree population goes in decline. So it's an enormous problem. Immigration alone is not going to fix it, but it's certainly helping and pushing in the right direction. David Beer, Director of Immigration Studies at the Cato Institute. Thank you very much. Thanks for having me on. And in Los Angeles, I'm David Brancaccio. 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