Supreme Court strikes down Trump’s global tariffs

The U.S. Supreme Court struck down President Donald Trump’s far-reaching global tariffs in a 6-3 decision on Friday, February 20, 2026, handing him a stinging loss on an issue crucial to his economic agenda.

Dale Rogers, Professor at W. P. Carey School of Business at ASU, and Dennis Hoffman, Director at the L. William Seidman Research Institute at ASU, joined us to discuss the decision.

“The tariff rate…under Trump was like 13.5%, and now what Trump wants to do is put on a 15% that will last for 150 days,” Rogers said, “…and it could be that coming out of this the tariffs go up.”

The new tariffs, according to Hoffman, are supposed to only be used when there are large and serious balance of payment deficits.

“There must have been even larger, more serious balance of payments problems,” Hoffman said, “…unfortunately, he (Trump) is acting in ways that I think will be inflationary, and they are gonna be less likely to create jobs.”

Hoffman discussed that in the Fall of 2024, over-year inflation was below two percent in Arizona, and even got to below one percent in early 2025.

“Now we’re back to two and a half, probably…three,” Hoffman explained, “There is an inflationary underpinning that is directly attributable to tariffs…the harm in tariffs is it takes money out of the pockets of consumers. They have to pay more for imported goods…they have less money in their pockets to spend on Arizona small businesses.”

Rogers emphasized that in many cases, in a good supply chain, the small businesses, which can be directly interfacing the consumer, are often upstream in the supply chain. While the larger firms have been pushing that inventory back to the small and medium-sized suppliers.

“The little guy always gets hurt, and this is one of those cases again,” Rogers said.