Novi, MI Correspondent — Yes, and the industry has been saying so since 2025 for reasons that had nothing to do with who was president.

You cannot make a capital decision against a tariff that a court can vacate. That was the argument, it was correct, and February proved it in the most expensive possible way.

What we have now is a ten percent global rate under a statute with a time limit built into it. That is not a policy a supplier can plan around. It’s a countdown.

If the administration wants the industrial outcome it says it wants, it needs a rate that lasts longer than a legal theory, and only one branch can supply that.

Dayton, OH Correspondent — A shop cannot quote against an expiring authority.

The metals and auto tariffs sit on different ground and survived, which is worth noticing. Those were done under a statute Congress wrote for exactly that purpose, with a process and findings behind it.

That’s the lesson. The tariffs that used the right instrument are still standing. The ones that used the emergency shortcut are gone and the money may have to be refunded.

Doing it properly was always available. It was slower, and slower lost the argument for a year, and now we’ve paid for the speed.

Clermont, FL Correspondent — My clients spent a year repricing against a tariff schedule that no longer exists, and now they’re repricing again.

Whatever anybody thinks of tariffs as policy, the whiplash is its own cost and small businesses absorb it worst. Two complete reversals in eighteen months is not a trade policy. It’s weather.

Congress writing it would at least mean the change comes with notice and a vote somebody can be held to.

Orange County, CA Correspondent — The refund question is the one nobody has priced and it’s enormous.

Something over a hundred and sixty billion was collected under an authority the Court has now held didn’t exist. Who gets it back, on what showing, and over what period, is being litigated at the trade court and will take years.

That’s a contingent liability on the federal balance sheet that nobody put in a budget, and it lands in the same window as everything else we’ve discussed about the fiscal path.

Tyler, Texas Correspondent — I supported the tariffs and I’m not going to pretend the ruling didn’t happen.

The Court said the statute doesn’t say tariffs and Congress has always used explicit words when it delegates that power. That’s a statutory reading, not a political one, and my side spent years arguing that agencies should be held to the words Congress actually wrote.

You don’t get to want that doctrine only when it constrains the other fellow.

So yes — through Congress. Write a bill. If the votes aren’t there, that’s information about how popular the policy actually is.

Jacksonville, FL Correspondent — Ports have now run three tariff regimes in eighteen months and the paperwork alone has been a cost.

What I’d want is stability more than any particular rate. A posted schedule that lasts five years beats a better schedule that lasts five months, because a shipper can plan against the first.

Only a statute produces that. An executive instrument produces a schedule that lasts as long as the authority behind it does, and February established how long that can be.

Owatonna, MN Correspondent — Agriculture has been on the receiving end of retaliation in both directions and would like the question settled.

The historical point is that Congress delegated tariff authority away over most of a century because it found the politics unbearable. Every member wanted protection for his own district and free trade everywhere else, and the result was unmanageable.

That’s why the delegation exists. Taking it back means the unbearable politics come back too, and a legislature that couldn’t pass appropriations last autumn is not obviously ready for it.

I’d still rather have the fight in the open.

Sydney, Australia Correspondent — From a trading partner’s chair, February was clarifying and unsettling in equal measure.

We negotiated an arrangement with your administration in good faith, on the basis of tariffs that a court has now held were never lawful. The agreements contain provisions referencing rates that no longer exist.

What that teaches every trade ministry is to ask which authority a commitment rests on before signing. That’s a reasonable lesson and it makes American commitments harder to accept quickly, which is the opposite of what your negotiators want.

An agreement ratified by your Congress is worth more to us than one that isn’t. That has always been true. It is now demonstrated.

Gastonia, NC Correspondent — Textile country has watched trade policy arrive as a press release for thirty years and it never lasted.

The ruling is the argument my colleagues at this table have been making all along, delivered by the branch that could actually make it.

Statutes outlive an administration. Everything else is a season, and this one lasted about ten months.

Sheffield, Jamaica Correspondent — I said last July that a rate had been applied to my region on a formula that bore no relation to any barrier we impose, and that nobody in Washington took our calls.

The rate is now void and the refunds are a question for your courts, in which we have no standing and no representation.

What I’d note is what a small trading state takes from the episode. A tariff imposed by executive instrument can be reversed by a court, which means it can also be reimposed by the next instrument. Neither the imposition nor the reversal involved anything we could plan against.

Predictability is what small economies buy from a large one. That is the commodity that has been in shortest supply.