Panel Discussion: Does the Supreme Court's Striking Down of Trump's Tariffs Diminish Him?

And joining us now to discuss Trump's response to the Supreme Court's ruling on tariffs is retired U.S. Marine Colonel Grant Newsham. He's a senior fellow at the Center for Security Policy and former U.S. diplomat. And we have retired Navy Captain Armin Kurdian. He's a foreign policy and national security analyst and California state candidate. Thank you both for joining us this afternoon. So Trump says he plans to use other means to replace these tariffs. I want you to take a look at what Trump had to say about this case. We are being ripped off by almost every single country in the world had massive, some massive surpluses. China had hundreds of billions of dollars in surpluses with the United States. They rebuilt China. They rebuilt the army. We built China's army by allowing that to happen. I have a great relationship with President Xi, but he respects our country now. Now what we've done, I charged China a 20 percent tariff as a penalty for sending fentanyl in. And that was 20 times more than they could make by selling fentanyl. And I said, you know, at some point you're going to say like, and they have reduced it. You know, fentanyl is down by more than 30 percent coming into our country. So, Armin, what does this mean? What does this ruling mean for national security? From a national security perspective, it means basically that Trump is going to have additional options at his disposal to go forward. I was a little concerned that the Supreme Court was going to turn down some of his tariffs. He was looking to do kind of reciprocal things. But I was a little surprised that they ruled that he didn't have that emergency power in terms of a national security aspect to impose tariffs under IEFA, although apparently he does under other circumstances. So he's going to try to figure out what he actually needs to do. What it does mean is perhaps like under Section 301, where you need to actually demonstrate that a foreign country has really been deliberately discriminatory. And it's going to maybe take a little bit longer time for him to impose some of these tariffs that he actually wants to do. Ultimately, he's going to get his way. He's just not going to be able to simply do it with the stroke of a pen in the span of a few minutes. So, Colonel Newsham, same question to you. Does this impact national security at all? I think it does, actually. And one way it does is it makes President Trump look diminished. He was effectively using these tariffs that he was imposing on people in other countries as a very effective foreign policy tool. And he was doing two things. One, he was correcting decades-long structural problems in our trade relations with just about every other country. And he was able to do this using a sledgehammer effectively. He got people to fall in line, rather than just nibbling around the edges the way trade relations are normally taken. But any time a president is seen as weak or he's, you say, diminished, other countries, particularly ones that don't like us, and even some that say they are our friends, have a tendency to say, well, is that all you have? And a president only has so many weapons that he can use to apply pressure on any other country. Trade and finance and economics is one of them. You can't really use your military all that much. So this is really all he's got. He still has options. But, say, when he looks like he's taken a blow, other countries are going to say, well, maybe we're not going to listen to you the way we used to. So, Armin, do you think President Trump has been diminished with this ruling? And President Trump has said he thinks foreign interests played a part in this ruling. What do you think about that? I don't know necessarily foreign interests played a part directly in the Supreme Court. I think the court was going to come to its ruling regardless of what it is. He's certainly not diminished. He's maybe had a tool taken out of his toolbox. And we've seen courts rule against presidents all the time. One of the things the court didn't really rule on was, for example, refunds and whether it forced the president's hand to actually issue refunds, which I think is going to be very problematic to actually enact. I mean, let's not forget, under the Biden administration, Joe Biden gave away hundreds of billions of dollars in student loan giveaways, and they weren't forced to give any of that money back when the court ruled against them. So the court, I think, was trying to be a very strict ruling of what it was without necessarily limiting the president's powers. They haven't really limited the president's powers. They simply said that the president was acting powers that he didn't really have going forward. But Trump is Donald Trump. He's certainly a unique individual. He will find a way to make his point known. He's got the bully pulpit. So he's been very effective in influencing international affairs in and of that matter. Colonel, interpret for us when President Trump said he thinks foreign interests influenced this ruling, played a part in it. Well, he's got a point of sorts because foreign interests basically have access to America's best lawyers and lobbyists to push their positions. And that is just the way it always is. And these, as I say, they're able to get American proxies to do their bidding for them. And that does apply if you look at who, as I brought some of these cases, you're always going to see the hand of China in there. And they've got no shortage of people who will bring the cases for them and do everything they can to represent China's interests rather than considering what country's name is on their own passport. So he has a point. You have to track back at it a little bit. But you'll find that American importers are going to bring all sorts of suits now to try and get some of their money back. But it's going to be a mess, at least for a few months. OK, so I have another clip here with me of President Trump saying that there's certainty now with this ruling. Let's just take a quick look. We are being ripped off by almost every single country in the world had massive, some massive surpluses. China had hundreds of billions of dollars in surpluses with the United States. They rebuilt China. They rebuilt the army. We built China's army by allowing that to happen. I have a great relationship with President Xi, but he respects our country now. Now, what we've done, I charged China a 20 percent tariff as a penalty for sending fentanyl in. And that was 20 times more than they could make by selling fentanyl. And I said, you know, at some point you're going to say like and they have reduced it. You know, fentanyl is down by more than 30 percent coming into our country. OK, I think that was a different, different clip than I intended, but let's roll with it. Your analysis on what President Trump said there. Even Donald Trump is not hard enough on China for my taste. They have been very, very bad actors over the last several decades in terms of how they have ripped us off. And early on, you know, we got liquored up on the fact that it was cheap Chinese labor, cheap Chinese markets to manufacture a lot of our goods for our voracious consumption here at home without necessarily accepting U.S. goods over there. So this is China has been a very bad actor. What they've done in cyber espionage, the intellectual property stolen from our companies, from our defense contractors as well. Trump is right. We have basically built the Chinese military through a lot of the intellectual property and the hard work that was done by American taxpayers, stolen by Chinese spies in order to improve their military. So this is a very serious problem. And I want the president to really be very tough on China. And a lot of his efforts, even though it can seem very protectionist on the face of it, tariffs you say these are taxes and they're regressive. The fact is that this is a national security issue in that standpoint to make sure that we are not overly dependent on foreign supply chains. And I think COVID exposed a lot of that. Donald Trump doesn't want that to happen again. So Colonel, in your view, do alternative tariff measures have enough teeth to play a big role in trade negotiations? They certainly could. If you make the effort to apply them, it certainly sounds like they're going to. It gives the president some of these, say the ability to oppose tariffs up to 15 percent when he has a trade imbalance. Additionally, he has some alternatives, according to it's an old law from 1930, but it still could apply. He can impose tariffs up to 50 percent, Section 232 and 301, the old ones. It gives a president an awful lot to work with. It just takes more effort. And President Trump wanted to go fast and he wanted to use a chainsaw. So he still got plenty of tools in his box, but it's not as fast as it could have been. And I think Justice Kavanaugh's, actually, his opinion is actually one of the best. And I think that appealed to the president, obviously. So it looked like the president was certainly dealing with an emergency when it came to fentanyl, by any measure. That's about a million Americans killed in the last 13 years. Whether or not the trade imbalances that have built up over 70, 80 years, that was an emergency. That can be argued. But he had a good position and a good argument under IEPA, but he's still got a good hand to play. But nonetheless, the fact that he's lost this, and it does, I think it does hurt him a bit. But if he collects his wits, and I think he will, he can make life very difficult for countries that he wants to lean on. Okay. Just a couple more things here, Armin. President Trump is set to visit China at the end of the month. You said earlier, this doesn't necessarily diminish him. What are some of the possible reactions that we can expect from, for example, adversaries such as China? Well, they may, they'll probably think initially maybe they could take advantage of the situation that the president is not going to be able to react. But if the president immediately goes back to his bag of tricks and imposes tariffs, basically reimposes the same tariffs he had before under IEPA, they're probably not going to try and take advantage of the situation. America is still the strongest economy in the world. And we do have that economic might to negotiate with. In the past, a lot of times it has been negotiated away. Trump loves this country, and he is a very strong proponent of American business and American manufacturing. And he's going to do what he can to defend things and make things advantageous for the US, just as much as a lot of foreign countries made it more advantageous for them in the past. And Trump's saying, look, we're number one. A lot of tens of trillions of dollars of foreign investment is coming into this country under the president's administration. He's going to continue to highlight that. He's going to continue to try to open markets for foreign investment, but at the same time, open foreign markets to US manufacturing. And a lot of what's being done internally in terms of the deregulation, eliminating a lot of the red tape that we have in this country to try to reinvigorate manufacturing in this nation, which is very vital as a part of our national security. He's juggling all these things in his mind. And when he goes to China, he's going to bring all that to the table and give us the best deal he can. Okay, Colonel, final comments from you. How do you foresee allies and adversaries of the United States might react to this ruling? I think they're going to, I think, very quickly try to get some of their money back. And I think some of them that have reached agreements with us are going to try to welch on those deals. But that's to be expected. At the same time, the smart countries are going to say, well, President Trump, he put these tariffs on for a reason, and we've dealt with these, and we've got a good deal with the Americans. Let's keep it going. But there's going to be some disruption for at least a few months, and then things will settle down. They always do. But I am concerned that you will find some countries that may say, well, President Trump has really no other tools that can really hurt us. His ability to impose tariffs so quickly and really so aggressively is something they weren't used to. And so missing, absent that, I think we may find some countries that don't want to cooperate with us, not just on economics, but on some other things as well. So I like the idea, I did, that the President was able to impose tariffs, high ones, almost at a whim, not at a whim, but to get response and to get countries to do what they needed to do. It was a free ride for too many countries for too long when it came to trade. And it was, so hopefully some of Mr. Trump's changes will actually stick. Okay, well, we'll wait and see, and we'll update our viewers on it. Thank you both for your time today for speaking with us. Thanks, Dan.