Trump in TOTAL CHAOS After Brutal Supreme Court Ruling Hits

Added: 2026-05-27

[00:00:01]"A deal is a deal," the European Commission said in a statement on Sunday, demanding that the US stick to the terms of a trade deal reached last year.

[00:00:10]This came after the US Supreme Court struck down Donald Trump's global tariffs on Friday.

[00:00:14]>> Actually not in a good mood.

[00:00:15]>> And he responded with new 10% tariffs and then increased them to 15% across the board. The Commission, which negotiates trade policy on behalf of 27 EU member states, said Washington must provide full clarity on the steps it intends to take. Last year's EU-US trade deal set a 15% US tariff rate for most EU goods, apart from those covered by other sectoral tariffs such as on steel.

[00:00:41]It also allowed zero tariffs on some products such as aircraft and spare parts.

[00:00:46]All right, I need you to stop whatever you're doing right now because this story is one of the most unhinged things to come out of Washington in a very long time. And that is genuinely saying something because Washington produces unhinged things at an industrial pace.

[00:01:00]But this one is different. This one has layers that keep getting worse the deeper you go. We are talking about a sitting president attacking the Supreme Court justices he personally nominated and appointed because they read the law, applied the law, and ruled against him.

[00:01:13]We are talking about a $166 billion that the federal government now has to pay back to American businesses. We are talking about hundreds of thousands of families, regular people, who paid more for groceries, for clothes, for school supplies, for electronics, for everything, who are now being told they have almost zero chance of ever seeing a single dollar back. And we are talking about a president who, when his first plan got struck down by the Supreme Court, went out and tried his second plan with a different legal argument and got that struck down, too. This story has layers, real, serious, consequential layers. And by the time we get through all of them, I genuinely think you're going to be stunned by how bad this has gotten and how little of it is being talked about in proportion to how much it matters. But before we go any further, real quick, let's be honest, you can't really trust mainstream media anymore. That's why we built Pump Politics to bring you real stories, real context, and no corporate spin. If you want to stay ahead of the headlines, join our free newsletter. We'll send the news straight to your inbox every day.

[00:02:10]Just click the link in the description to join. And if you just want to support what we're doing, join us. Be part of a community that actually cares about the truth. All right, let's get back to the video. federal trade court ruling against President Trump's new global tariffs. Making Cassella joins us this morning now from Washington as well to discuss what's just happened. Good morning.

[00:02:32]Good morning, Andrew. A setback here for President Trump's tariff agenda. The Court of International Trade ruling late on Thursday that the 10% across-the-board tariffs are unlawful.

[00:02:42]So, remember, these were essentially President Trump's replacement tariffs.

[00:02:46]He imposed these only after the Supreme Court invalidated invalidated the 80-page tariffs in February. So, the president used what's known here as Section 122. It allows for tariffs to address for balance of payments issues.

[00:02:58]The White House had argued in court that that meant that they could be used to address the trade deficit. The Court of International Trade though, in a 2-1 ruling, saying that the statute does not give President Trump that authority.

[00:03:10]Let's set the scene properly because context here is everything. Back in February of 2026, the Supreme Court of the United States issued a ruling, a 6-3 ruling, that said Trump did not have the legal authority to impose his sweeping global tariffs. The specific law he used was called the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, often shortened to IEEPA, and six justices, a majority of the court, looked at that law and said the president does not have the authority to do what he did under it.

[00:03:37]Six justices said no. And here is the part that turned this from a legal story into a political earthquake. Two of those six justices were Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett. Two justices that Trump himself nominated. Two justices he championed. Two justices whose confirmations he celebrated, his own picks, sitting on his side of the ideological aisle, and they voted against him. When that ruling came down, the government immediately became legally obligated to refund $166 billion in tariffs it had collected from American businesses. That is the situation we walked into going into this week. And it has only gotten messier since. Now, fast forward to May 10th and 11th of 2026, Trump gets on Truth Social, his preferred platform for saying things that would make any normal communications director immediately clear out their desk, and he goes after Gorsuch and Barrett directly and publicly. He writes that they were appointed by him and yet have hurt the country so badly. He says their decision on tariffs cost the United States $159 billion that now has to be paid back to, and I want you to really hear this, enemies and people and companies and countries that have been ripping us off for years. So, in Trump's framing, businesses and countries that paid tariffs under a law the Supreme Court has now ruled was illegal, those are enemies. And the justices who ruled correctly according to the law, they hurt the country. That is the argument he is making publicly to his millions of followers on social media. And it gets even more specific than that. He then suggests, and this is a real thing he actually posted, not a paraphrase, not an exaggeration, that the justices should have just written a tiny sentence saying any money paid by others to the United States does not have to be paid back. Just write that sentence. Put it in the ruling. One line, problem solved.

[00:05:14]Are you kidding me? He is suggesting that the highest court in the land should have inserted a custom sentence into a legal ruling, a sentence that would have nullified the government's refund obligation to protect him from the consequences of his own unconstitutional policy. And he posted that publicly. He thought that was a reasonable thing to say out loud. That tells you a lot about where his head is at right now. And then on May 11th, he took it one more step. He posted that Republican nominated justices should show loyalty to the person that appointed them. Loyalty to the person that appointed them. Not loyalty to the Constitution, not loyalty to the rule of law, not loyalty to the American people.

[00:05:51]Loyalty to Trump. He literally typed those words and posted them. In case you're wondering how Justice Gorsuch responded, because yes, he did respond, Gorsuch went on ABC News and said he remains independent and fearless despite the president's criticism. Independent and fearless, that is a sitting Supreme Court Justice, a man Trump nominated and celebrated, going on national television and saying plainly, I heard what he said and it changes nothing about how I do my job. That is a remarkable moment in American political history and it is happening right now. So, let's get to where things actually stand as of this week, because the numbers are staggering. The Supreme Court struck down the tariffs. The government owes 166 billion dollars in refunds to American businesses. As of May 13th, US Customs and Border Protection disclosed in court that only about 87,000 claims worth approximately 35 and a half billion dollars have been approved and processed. That is roughly 15% of the total expected refunds. 15% is sitting out there in line right now are approximately 330,000 importers, businesses of all sizes waiting for money that the court has already said the government owes them. Some of them are small importers. Some of them are companies that paid enormous sums in tariffs and need that money back to stay liquid and keep operating. 15% processed, that is the pace we are at.

[00:07:08]And then there are the regular Americans. The people who don't import goods for a living, the people who don't have a claim number or a customs broker or a legal team on retainer. The people who just went to the grocery store, the clothing store, the electronic store and paid more for things because prices went up across the board. A Harvard University study put numbers to what that actually cost people, an average 7% increase in retail prices translating to an additional 1,000 to 2,000 dollars per American household over the past year. 1 to 2,000 dollars per family gone, absorbed, spent. And now Al Jazeera reported on May 14th that consumers who paid those higher prices during the trade war may never get any of it back.

[00:07:50]Never. The businesses get refunds because they paid the tariffs at the border. The regular family who paid inflated prices at the checkout, they are not in any line. There is no mechanism for them. They are simply out the money. And that is the part of this story that I think deserves way more attention than it is getting. Okay, so let's go deeper. Because I think a lot of people here tariff fight and immediately tune out. It sounds technical. It sounds like an economics lecture. It sounds like something that doesn't touch their daily life. And I want to push back on that heart. Because what happened here is not abstract at all. It is one of the most concrete, tangible economic stories of the past year. And the people who got hit hardest by it are the exact people who were told this policy was going to help them. So let's walk through it carefully because there are a few angles here that most coverage is either glossing over or missing entirely. Let's start at the very beginning with what the tariff strategy was actually supposed to do.

[00:08:42]Trump's pitch on tariffs was straightforward and it had a populist logic to it that resonated with a lot of voters. The argument was this. For decades foreign countries have been taking advantage of America. They sell us their goods, we buy them. But when America tries to sell its goods over there, we face barriers and restrictions. The trade relationship is unbalanced. And the way to fix it is to impose tariffs, taxes on imported goods, which will either force other countries to negotiate fairer deals, or generate revenue for the United States government, or push American consumers to buy domestic products instead. That was the theory. And the big rollout of this strategy, the moment it all went public in a dramatic, sweeping, this changes everything kind of way, came in April of 2025 when Trump announced what his team called liberation day tariffs.

[00:09:28]Broad, global, affecting dozens of countries all at once. A major move. And the stock market responded that day with what analysts described as its worst performance in half a decade. Not a stumble, not a correction, the worst day in 5 years. Markets were telling you something right then and there.

[00:09:44]Then came the legal fight, and this is where things get constitutionally significant, because you can't just impose sweeping global tariffs without legal authority. The president has to point to a law that gives him that power, and Trump pointed to the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. The argument was that trade imbalances constituted a national emergency, and that under IEEPA, the president had the authority to respond to a national emergency by imposing tariffs. Courts started reviewing that argument, and eventually the case made its way to the Supreme Court of the United States. Six justices, including two Trump appointees, looked at the law and said, "No. The president does not have the authority to impose sweeping global tariffs under IEEPA." The ruling was clear. The legal basis for the tariffs did not exist, and the immediate consequence of that ruling was a refund obligation of $166 billion.

[00:10:36]That money had been collected. It now had to go back, and the government's capacity to process all those refund claims quickly has clearly been insufficient, because as of this week, only 15% of the total has been processed, with 330,000 importers still waiting. Now, here's what the administration did next, and this is the part that reveals a lot about the mindset driving these decisions. After the Supreme Court issued its ruling in February, the administration did not step back from the tariff approach. It went looking for another legal authority to use. It found Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, which allows the president to impose temporary tariffs of up to 15% in specific circumstances related to balance of payments issues.

[00:11:14]The administration imposed new 10% global tariffs under that authority. A different law, a different legal theory, same basic outcome, broad tariffs on imports from around the world. And on May 6th, a federal court of International Trade ruled two to one that those tariffs were also invalid and unauthorized by law. Two separate courts, two separate legal analysis, two separate conclusions, both saying the sweeping global tariff approach does not hold up. That is not a coincidence. That is a pattern. And that pattern matters enormously for what comes next. And let's spend some time on the loyalty comment because it deserves more than a passing mention. When Trump posted that Republican nominated justices should show loyalty to the person that appointed them, he was not speaking carelessly or off the cuff. He was expressing a coherent but deeply troubling view of how the American government should function. In his model, the judiciary is not an independent branch that checks the other two. It is an institution that should produce outcomes favorable to the president who shaped this membership.

[00:12:10]Justices who rule against the president who appointed them are in his framing disloyal. They have failed. They have hurt the country. And the remedy, his suggested remedy, is for justices to write rulings that protect the president from the consequences of his own unconstitutional decisions. That is not how the constitutional system works.

[00:12:29]That is not how it was designed to work.

[00:12:31]And the reason the founders created an independent judiciary with lifetime appointments specifically to insulate justices from political pressure was precisely to prevent a president from treating the courts as an arm of his own administration. When Justice Gorsuch went on ABC News and said he was independent and fearless, he was not just defending himself personally, he was defending the entire concept of judicial independence. And that concept is now under direct public attack from the president of the United States.

[00:12:59]Former US Assistant Trade Representative Harry Broadman put the broader damage plainly during an interview on Al Jazeera on May 14th. He said this episode has undermined any policy credibility, frankly, of this administration. And he said US global standing has been eroded by this episode. That is a former senior trade official, someone with deep experience in how American trade policy functions on the world stage, saying that the whole sequence of events has done real, lasting damage to America's credibility as a reliable and legally coherent trading partner. Think about what that means from the perspective of other countries watching this unfold. America imposes sweeping tariffs. Those tariffs get struck down by its own Supreme Court. America imposes a second set of tariffs. Those get struck down by a federal court. The president attacks the judges. Hundreds of billions in refunds pile up. And through all of it, the policy goal, fairer trade, better deals, more American manufacturing, has not materialized in any concrete or measurable way. The signal that sends to international partners is not a reassuring one. And rebuilding credibility that has been publicly eroded this badly takes a long time.

[00:13:58]Okay, let's bring this all the way home.

[00:14:00]Let's talk about what this actually means beyond the legal arguments and the political drama and what it is going to mean in the weeks and months ahead. So, the first thing to understand is that this is a constitutional crisis with a price tag. And that combination is genuinely rare. Most constitutional disputes live in the abstract. They are about principles, about precedents, about the boundaries of power. This one has a very specific and very large number attached to it. 166 billion dollars. That money was collected under a policy the Supreme Court has ruled was unconstitutional. The government owes it back. And the pace at which it is being paid back, 15% as of May 13th, is deeply inadequate given the scale of the obligation and the number of businesses sitting in that refund line. 330,000 importers are waiting. Many of them are not giant corporations with unlimited cash reserves who can absorb the delay without consequence. Many of them are small and mid-size businesses that pay significant tariff bills and genuinely need that money back to keep operating.

[00:14:58]The slow pace of refund processing is not just an administrative inconvenience. For some of those businesses, it is a real and ongoing financial strain. And the president's response to this situation, rather than directing his administration to accelerate the refund process, has been to attack the judges who created the obligation by doing their jobs correctly. That is where we are. The second thing is about judicial independence. And I want to be direct about this because it matters a great deal regardless of your politics.

[00:15:24]Trump's demand that justices show loyalty to the person that appointed them is not a normal political complaint. It is a direct challenge to one of the foundational principles of the American system of government. The entire point of giving federal judges lifetime appointments is to make them immune to political pressure. They cannot be fired. They cannot be threatened with removal for ruling the wrong way. They serve for life specifically so they can make decisions based on the law rather than on who is currently in power. When Trump publicly attacks Gorsuch and Barrett by name, calling them disloyal, accusing them of hurting the country, he is trying to use the court of public opinion to do what the Constitution prevents him from doing directly. He cannot remove them. He cannot punish them legally, but he can post on Truth Social and try to damage their reputations with his base. And the fact that Gorsuch had to go on television to assert his independence, the fact that a Supreme Court justice had to publicly state that he will continue doing his job despite presidential pressure is something that should alarm anyone who values the separation of powers. That is not a partisan statement. That is a structural one. The third thing, and this is the one that should make the most people the most angry, is that the people who got hurt the most have no path to recovery.

[00:16:31]One to $2,000 per American household, that is what the Harvard study found. 7% average increase in retail prices. That money did not evaporate into thin air.

[00:16:40]It was paid by real families at real stores for real goods that cost more because tariffs drove up prices along the entire supply chain. And when you ask who is getting made whole out of that $166 billion refund pool, the answer is businesses and importers, the people who paid tariffs at the border, which makes sense legally. They are the ones who have a documented claim. But the consumer at the end of the chain, the person who bought the imported goods after the tariff cost was baked into the retail price, they have no legal claim.

[00:17:09]There is no refund process for them.

[00:17:11]There is no form to fill out. There is no line to stand in. They simply paid more for things for an extended period under a policy the Supreme Court has now said was illegal and they are not getting that money back. Trump's entire political brand was built on the idea that he fights for regular Americans, for the working family, for the people who got left behind by the system and the people most directly and financially harmed by this particular policy with the least ability to recover are precisely those regular Americans. That gap is enormous and it is politically explosive. The fourth thing to watch is the plan C question. Plan A, the IEEPA tariffs was struck down by the Supreme Court in February. Plan B, the section 122 tariffs was struck down by a federal court on May 6th. The administration has now had two separate legal vehicles for imposing broad global tariffs ruled invalid by two separate courts.

[00:18:01]The question everyone is asking right now is whether there is a plan C, whether the administration is going to find a third legal authority and try again. And if they do and if that gets struck down too, the credibility damage Harry Broadman described is going to compound into something much harder to recover from. International trading partners who are watching this sequence of events are already factoring American legal instability into their calculations. A third failed attempt would accelerate that significantly and the political fallout is still developing in ways that are hard to fully predict. Republicans in Congress have been notably quiet about Trump's attacks on Gorsuch and Barrett. They are not defending the justices, they are not pushing back on the loyalty demand, they are mostly saying nothing which is itself a signal about where the political incentives are right now. But that silence is not sustainable indefinitely. At some point, particularly if more courts issue more rulings against the administration's tariff approaches, the question of whether it is appropriate for a sitting president to public demand loyalty from the judiciary is going to become impossible to avoid and every Republican senator and representative is going to have to give some version of an answer to it. The answers they give or refuse to give will matter because the legitimacy of the court system as an independent institution is not a narrow partisan issue. It is foundational to how the entire country functions. And right now, that foundation is being publicly challenged by the person sitting in the Oval Office. Here is the bottom line. Trump's signature economic policy was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, including by two justices he appointed. He responded by attacking those justices publicly and demanding their loyalty. He imposed a second set of tariffs under different legal authority and got those struck down, too. A $166 billion in refunds is owed with only 15% processed so far and 330,000 businesses still waiting.

[00:19:46]Regular American families who paid an extra $1 to $2,000 in higher prices have no path to getting that money back. And the credibility of American trade policy on the world stage has taken real immeasurable damage. That is the story, not the legal jargon, not the court case numbers. The story is that regular people pay the price for an unconstitutional policy and the president's response to all of it was to go online and attack the judges. What happens next with a potential plan C and with the refund backlog is going to define the next phase of this. Stay with us because this one is far from over.