Fullstendig transkripsjon av Tariff-Palooza

impose tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China. And then about a month later in April of last year, he decided to tax and tariff the entire world. So we thought maybe that was a little extreme. And, you know, we were looking for, you know, is there a way that we can challenge this? And Reilly: Hi Ryan. Ryan Morrison: and Brendan Philbin. Brendan Philbin: Happy to be back. Ryan Morrison: and they are also senior attorneys at the Liberty Justice Center. The this is Tara Palooza. You may be aware that the Liberty Justice Center successfully challenged the president's emergency tariffs at the Supreme Court. So we're going to talk about this major victory for the country and our organization. First, we'll talk to our litigation director, Jeffrey Schwab, about how the tariff case came together and interview him about the other behind the scenes things about the case. Then Riley will be our tour guide for this month's to Motown as we talk about what the Supremes decided in the tariff case. Brendan Philbin: Owen, welcome as our first guest. Excellent, thank you. Glad to be here, Philbs. Yeah. I call Philbs Philbs instead of Brendan, so if I slip that in there. That's good. That's between friends. So why don't we ⁓ start just with the background ⁓ of you and ⁓ my boss is on here. let's start with after ⁓ college. We don't want to myself fired just an episode in episode two. Yeah, we'll save those stories for later. Yeah, ⁓ so. Jeffrey Schwab: I happened to come across Eugene Volek's Volek conspiracy blog that had a post by Ilya Soman ⁓ mentioning that he thought there were major questions doctrine and non-delegation doctrine issues involved in the tariff ⁓ decision by the president. So ⁓ we thought, like those doctrines. Maybe that's something we could do. So we decided to look into it. Brendan Philbin: That's positive. However, the demand at which we need cement far outpaces the supply which we can produce it. So that's number one. It is spread into different markets, right? Cement is basically a product of your import of the raw material, which is effectively rock and that's ground into the cement powder that goes into concrete and things of that nature. And it takes a lot of energy. So you want to be next to an energy source. ⁓ That was a nice introduction and a nice way to say, or a fancy way to say what we do, which is basically we are a trading company that buys and sells goods globally, and then we transport those goods globally. And we are building our presence in the United States. Our company was founded in, actually founded in Singapore and is headquartered in Singapore. So we have a lot of Asia-based sourcing of commodities. Ryan Morrison: Finally, we'll talk to someone involved in international trade, explain how the tariffs affected real world businesses. And if you, that's right, you deserve a tariff refund, we'll explain how the Liberty Justice Center can help you get one. Okay, and so for the non-lawyers out there, the major questions doctrine is if Congress is going to give the president a power, it's going to make that power explicit in the law. It's not going to be hidden under a rock. And the non-delegation doctrine is something that's not gotten a lot of play at the Supreme Court, but it's generally the principle that there are certain things Congress has to do and can't let the president. Brendan Philbin: And then you need the human capital to actually run these massive plants, you multiple billion dollar facilities. And they consume the energy part is usually fossil fuel input. ⁓ And we have in the United States, we have opinions about these things. So cement could be considered a dirtier product, right? So we as Americans don't, we kind of like to push those in other places. We don't want. Jeffrey Schwab: That's the basic idea that the major questions doctrine applies to major questions, big powers or things that have a huge economic or political impact. I would think that tariffing the entire world qualifies for that. you we thought we had a pretty good case. And then the president seemed to say that Congress had effectively delegated him the power to impose tariffs on the entire world. Ryan Morrison: First up. Brendan Philbin: And that is kind of interesting from the global perspective and from the American perspective because we are sourcing so much of our resources from the Asian continent. ⁓ And the production in Asia, as I guess we all kind of know or at least have heard, is incredibly robust, cost-effective, and so much so that it means we can ship it from halfway across the world to bring it into the United States. Ryan Morrison: You cannot take on the president of the United States without great leadership and great lawyers. So here today is the Hannibal Smith of our Lawyer A team, the director of litigation, Jeffrey Schwab, to tell the story about how this wonderful plan came together. Welcome, Jeff. Brendan Philbin: in our backyard, that sort of NIMBY approach that we've kind of taken, whether it's windmills in our oceans or cement plants or nuclear power or whatever it might be. It's like, okay, they look good on paper, but I don't want to look at it. So that becomes an issue of how then the supply demand plays out. And in other parts of the world, this stuff is just made and this could be cement. This could be, we see it in steel, seen all sorts of finished products that particularly go into infrastructure. Ryan Morrison: Next. Jeffrey Schwab: at whatever rate he wanted, whenever he wanted, he could change it at any time for any reason he wanted. And we thought maybe that would be an extreme delegation of Congress's Article 1 power to tariff. Brendan Philbin: So this is interesting business for us. It's quite fun business for me because I get to connect that world that I spent 15 years of my career building and developing and making that company with an excellent partner of mine and close friend of mine and bringing that back home to the US and combining

those worlds is something I'm pretty ⁓ humbled to do and it's very exciting. So I was glad to kind of share a few. Ryan Morrison: There is no tariff palooza without the life of the party. So Riley Stevens is here to break down the Supreme Court's decision for us in this month's trip to Motown. Brendan Philbin: is that they're made more effectively and at lower cost levels in other parts of the So much so that it supports the freight movement from all the way over on the other side of the world into the United States. So my very rough numbers is we're somewhere around 50 million tons of cement short of supply in the United States. So we need to import 50 million tons. And the three Ryan Morrison: But there had to be an emergency though, right? Wink, wink. Jeffrey Schwab: Yeah, but the president claimed that he could impose or that he could declare an emergency for basically any reason and in court said that the courts couldn't second-guess that emergency justification. Ryan Morrison: Finally, it's one thing to think tariffs in abstract. ⁓ It's another thing to hear from someone that lived with ⁓ So Brendan reached out to someone that works in international to find out just how big an impact the tariffs had on businesses ⁓ and the imported products that we all buy at the ⁓ And he's going to explain how the Liberty Justice Center help your businesses get a refund check. Brendan Philbin: insights to how this stuff impacts us and thought it was a great idea when you brought it up a few months ago and we were chit chatting. Biggest markets for that is, as we could probably guess, is Texas, California and Florida. That's where we see the growth of humans and people and businesses and infrastructure. So of course, naturally cement, steel, rebar, all these things are going to be coming for those types of markets. And I think Texas is probably somewhere around 15, 20 million tons of import cement this year. So it's pretty considerable. ⁓ Ryan Morrison: Okay, so how did we go about getting the clients? I know there were some prospective ones down on that island off of Australia, the penguins, did we reach out to them or what did we do? if you got stuck with a tariff bill. Take it away, Brendan. Jeffrey Schwab: Well, unfortunately, the penguins we couldn't get ⁓ either because they didn't speak English or because they didn't have access to the internet. But in any event, we did find ⁓ some clients, some businesses that did pay the tariffs and ⁓ these businesses were affected by the tariffs. In fact, I talked to about, I would say about three dozen different business owners who were affected by these tariffs ⁓ negatively. Brendan Philbin: So why don't we do it? I think it's a conscientious decision of the American public and we don't quite understand it maybe to say, well, it can quickly happen. Well, not necessarily the case. There's politics involved. There's financial capital from big corporations and then the American public may be saying, no, we just don't want it around us. So that's kind of how I would view it. But Jeffrey Schwab: And they all had different stories about how they created this business and ⁓ they loved whatever it was. mean, it was amazing talking. Sure. So our first client is VOS Selections and that's Victor Schwartz. He started this wine importing business about 39, now 40 years ago with his mother. And ⁓ he Ryan Morrison: Yeah, tell us about them. Tell us about our clients. Go ahead. Brendan Philbin: What it means is because this has been happening for so long, these supply chains have been built up and they're very robust supply chains. And then that tariff situation just threw the wrench into the gear and basically halted it and said, okay, how do we adjust to that? And the adjustment was pay more or as a producer of any of these products, shift it to somewhere else. Jeffrey Schwab: imports all sorts of wines across the world. He works with local farmers in other countries. He imports other beverages, I guess, but mostly wine. now he works with his daughter. So a family business for 40 years. And of course he was importing wine that now is tariffed at Brendan Philbin: And so that model, ⁓ the buyers of ⁓ cement in Texas, I think, is perhaps in your world a small business. But that idea of that you can't get it here, we don't make it here, we have a significant surplus, could you apply that to maybe an even smaller business, perhaps a working mom trying to have a side hustle ⁓ on Etsy by making ⁓ Jeffrey Schwab: at least 10 % and maybe more depending on where it came from. And as you might know, ⁓ wine business or alcohol sales is a pretty ⁓ regulated business. ⁓ So for example, in New York City, or I'm sorry, in New York State, ⁓ you need to post what your prices are about a month in advance. So ⁓ Victor would have to post his prices for his wines. Brendan Philbin: certain certain crafts. Yeah. And that's really the interesting part because, you know, I think sometimes of our company as small and nimble. But yeah, it's it's even the mom and pop shops. They they are getting hit even even more so. Or the mom who makes something produces something overseas. She brings it in. Maybe she's making ⁓ shoes or. Jeffrey Schwab: but he didn't know what the tariff was going to be because the president could change it at any time. And so this of course was a huge problem for his business and it really affected it. And plus the justification by the president ⁓ for the tariffs was that we need to improve American manufacturing and that just didn't seem to apply to wine. can't... Brendan Philbin: a hat or some sort of consumer good, or let's say a textile. It's coming from Bangladesh or China, Vietnam, all these places with textiles are typically produced. ⁓ Yeah, can you do that in the United States? You probably can, but the scale and magnitude that those countries have and been built up around, the infrastructure there for them to be able to do that is again, it's very robust. So

you can, you have direct channels to manage that production. we deal primarily in dry bulk commodities That's how we started. We started as a shipping company that background is in ⁓ is in shipping. I worked with Danish ship owners in the dry bulk segment. So you move things that a lot of people use every day but don't think about every day. These are things like your agricultural products, grain, soybeans that feed animals, grains that feed humans, energy products, ⁓ coal, you know, a very controversial topic, but it moves around the world and it comes out of this country. We use it in this country. So these topics, these commodities come with a lot of Jeffrey Schwab: ⁓ You know, you can't replicate a Bordeaux wine in Virginia or California. They're just different products. Brendan Philbin: So what's interesting in a place like Bangladesh or a place like China, Vietnam, these manufacturing facilities are so massive that in actual fact, they don't necessarily build them for one particular company. They build them to be open to the market. So we have a small shoemaker with small t-shirt or exercise goods. They can all be made in the same factory. preconceived notions and thoughts, but we're moving in and we're seeing the real impact of these commodities for average regular consumers, which we are in and of ourselves across the world. So food, energy, and building and construction products, right? Those are the probably the main ones that we all know. Cement, steel, ⁓ these products that build our houses, buildings, and infrastructure. And then now the big stuff is sort of the rare earth minerals that are going into our batteries for What changes is they would change the mechanisms of the machinery to fit the Etsy mom, to fit the dad who's making ⁓ leather belts and needs belt buckle because it's cast iron needs to come from somewhere over there. We don't, he can't find it here in the United States. And then these parts get impacted. They will all be taxed in tariff. They were all taxed in tariffs. So the small Etsy mom, she can't bear the cost of that. But in order to bring it in, she has to, she has no choice. Jeffrey Schwab: another client is ⁓ ⁓ and this ⁓ a product by ⁓ just ⁓ guy. He started making these kits that play music, basically they play sound, ⁓ that you ⁓ can buy the kit and then you can create this ⁓ product that makes sound and ⁓ he imported these various pieces from ⁓ Asia. Brendan Philbin: cars, phones, computers. So these things make up the basket, let's say, of dry bulk commodities. ⁓ We have since expanded into freight forwarding, so we move things on containers as well. That goes across a different spectrum of customers. Some we actually are trading with, so we buy and sell their product, i.e. scrap metal. We work with some American companies on that. ⁓ And others are, you know, sort of more... because she probably doesn't get up payment from her consumer. So think of the cashflow effect and impact that it has on those small

companies. We have credit lines, credit facilities, we can work through our banks, we can extend those sort of trades through those credit facilities, but the really small business, the real small mom and pop business, they probably can't bear the brunt of that impact. Right. And I know we're... Jeffrey Schwab: And as a small business, basically a guy that ⁓ makes ⁓ these kits in his loft, ⁓ the tariff really affected his business because it made it almost impossible to ⁓ sell it at a competitive rate. And there was concern that maybe he just wouldn't do this anymore because it wasn't worth it because of the tariffs. Brendan Philbin: consumer oriented, they might be a marketing agent and they have big global campaigns and we move their product being produced in Asia to the quote unquote Western markets, USA, Europe, Australia. So that gives you a little bit of a broad picture of what we do, I guess. Yeah, how about maybe walking us through ⁓ just an example ⁓ transaction, maybe from ⁓ you have a relationship ⁓ somewhere ⁓ then bring from we're spinning up a new case against tariffs. So a similar business is we don't make ⁓ Tonka trucks or Care Bears here anymore either, because that's one of our clients and our latest challenge to tariffs. All Ryan Morrison: And so that's the real world impact here. These small businesses, which we keep hearing from all our politicians are the backbone of America, they were really facing some dire straits, right? They could have been forced out of business. Brendan Philbin: that relationship in Asia to delivering these goods in the US. How does it work and kind of what hoops you have to jump through in order to do that? Yeah, well, what's interesting is that the things that we do, there's very little impediment to it. ⁓ You you need some financial resources to buy and sell something. You need some financial resources to ship it. But effectively, anyone really could figure out a way to do this. And I think Jeffrey Schwab: Right, and that of course is directly contrary to what the president was saying he wanted the tariffs to accomplish. That actually brings me to another client, Genova Pipe. This is a ⁓ manufacturer of ⁓ pipe things that you might use in your home for plumbing and things like that. although they manufactured the pipe in the United States, ⁓ the resin that they used to ⁓ manufacture the pipe was Brendan Philbin: so to hear more about the ⁓ process that Owen and I just discussed, please visit Liberty Justice Center's Project Terra website. And that is your one-stop shop for all things tariff refunds. There's checklists ⁓ news alerts regarding how to, on how to actually navigate this massive bureaucracy and get that money back that was unlawfully taken from you by the U.S. government. That's kind of what's what has been interesting with this whole tariff situation is if we look at the look at imported goods in the United States, I guess we kind of just assume that it's just large corporations, the headline names that we know bringing in goods from other parts of the world and they cost less. So therefore it's more cost effective and efficient for them to do it that way. But in actual fact, such a large portion of what we import is done by small businesses and Jeffrey Schwab: manufactured overseas. ⁓ But because other companies in other countries, like for example, Canada, also imported that resin and they weren't subject to the tariffs, when Genova Pipe went to sell its product in Canada, which it had a lot of customers, it was immediately at a competitive disadvantage because the price that it was paying for the resin was way higher than the price that its Canadian competitors Brendan Philbin: Small businesses run, as we know, quite differently than the big corporations. We don't sit there and in a good way. This is why I started my business. I don't have to have meetings talking about all these little nitty gritty things because we're a massive organization. We can act quickly, we can think quickly, we can create solutions and work with those big companies to bring them those opportunities. We can do it in a swift way. But what that often means is we're not, most of us are not experts at these topics. Jeffrey Schwab: were paying for its resin. And so when it went to export products to Canada, it actually ⁓ could have lost customers. In other words, it would have decreased US exports, ⁓ which again, contrary to what the president said the point of the tariffs were. Ryan Morrison: I see. So we got these great clients here, these small businesses to take on the president of the United States. Were they a little bit nervous about doing this? Brendan Philbin: filing our taxes. I'm not an expert. I'm not a CPA. I don't want to rely on myself filing my own taxes. That's why we hire the experts to do that. And customs clearance and ⁓ tariffs and duties and all these things, it's another one of those areas that is highly complex. ⁓ It's a lot of nuanced jargon and things that the average person isn't going to know about, even someone like me who is importing goods. Jeffrey Schwab: Yeah, well, I mean, of course, any time any of our clients sue a governmental entity, ⁓ they're certainly concerned about what the repercussions can be. And that's only natural because the government controls so much of our lives and has the power to impose penalties and different regulations on us. And when you're a business that's regulated by the government, of course, it is a little concerning. Brendan Philbin: you trust the industry that's built up around it, you will have a customs broker. You'll have people that have passed the brokerage license test to do these things, which is actually a very difficult test. A lot of people don't pass on the first time. So a lot of people stay away from it. So we don't have a lot of people floating around the United States that are really knowledgeable on these topics. Then you combine that with a massive change in rules,

regulations, and application of duty and tariff. Jeffrey Schwab: And you know, I had to tell the clients that I couldn't promise that there wouldn't be a tax audit for the next year or something like that ⁓ that might be a retaliation. ⁓ Ryan Morrison: seen that before. mean, think Bill Clinton famously, if you like criticized him something in the media, then you got audited the next year. Jeffrey Schwab: Yeah, and you'll recall there was a whole controversy with certain groups during the Obama administration, certain conservative groups during the Obama administration, being Brendan Philbin: and it threw the whole global order into tailspin. ⁓ for us, have, ⁓ for example, we import into Texas. So that's with a long-term partner and cement producer Vietnam, ⁓ who we've worked with for many years. ⁓ have the privilege of ⁓ buying product them and opening up new ⁓ with them. That's kind of our role that take with them. ⁓ And ⁓ while they import in the United they Ryan Morrison: Yes, the rogue office in Cincinnati. Yes, the IRS office. Jeffrey Schwab: Right, so this isn't a illegitimate concern. This is a real concern, and of course our clients were concerned about that, and of course other businesses that I talked to were concerned about that. And some of them decided the risk wasn't worth it. I of course completely understand that. We don't want to put anybody in a position where they feel uncomfortable or they feel like ⁓ they're going to be ⁓ hurt by being a plaintiff for one of our cases. Brendan Philbin: selling FOB, which means they sell the product but they don't control the freight. So the buyer will control the freight when someone sells FOB. ⁓ They wanted to do more CIF business, which means that they sell the product and they control the freight. So that's where we step in as a company. what we'll do is, Texas has the biggest demand for cement in our country. ⁓ Jeffrey Schwab: ⁓ But that just sort of emphasizes to me how brave our five clients were for stepping up to become plaintiffs, to become sort of the face of ⁓ this tariff challenge ⁓ that really had a huge impact across the US and world economy. Brendan Philbin: We're short several tens of millions of tons in Texas and there's a very high demand due to the infrastructure projects there, these data centers that are being built. So we had eyes on Texas and we were able to find an excellent customer and partner that we work with there. So we build that relationship and it takes time from a commercial standpoint and the trust standpoint. You're bringing two different styles and cultures together and we're kind of that mediator to say, okay, Ryan Morrison: So we got the clients and so now it's time to sue. As I recall, there was a little bit of uncertainty about where to sue. Tell us a little bit about that. Jeffrey Schwab: Well, that's an interesting question because there is this little known court called the Court of International Trade, which in the last year, I think many of us have learned a significant amount about. ⁓ that court generally has ⁓ exclusive jurisdiction over issues of trade, such as tariffs. And so the question was whether that court, Brendan Philbin: we'll bring you closer and we can expedite that process. So that happens hopefully in an incubated sense, we're able to develop that and then able to drive this business across the line. And that is done very commercially, ⁓ sales and purchase contracts and then freight contracts. These are all sort of standardized within the industry, but that's kind of how the process works, but it takes, usually takes months at a time. Then you throw in what we would call, you know, the tariff situation. Jeffrey Schwab: had jurisdiction over a challenge to the constitutionality and legality of the president's tariff order. ⁓ And some people thought, well, maybe it doesn't because those tariffs aren't legitimate, so therefore the Court of International Trade ⁓ doesn't have jurisdiction because it only has jurisdiction over legitimate tariffs. But the response to that was, ⁓ well, then that sort of Brendan Philbin: what we might call that a black swan event or whatever it might be, you throw that into the mix and that just puts the brakes on everything because the uncertainty is there. Nobody knows how to act. Nobody knows what to do and nobody knows how to interpret the legislation that's being implemented, even the experts. So that's what we started to find and that started to cause the fun discussions that happened around our industry. Jeffrey Schwab: puts the cart before the horse because in order to decide ⁓ whether the Court of International Trade has jurisdiction or not, you would have to decide whether the merits of the case, whether the actual tariffs were legal or not. And so ⁓ after thinking about it for some time and doing some research, we decided to file in the Court of International Trade. Brendan Philbin: Right. And as you're building these connections and facilitating the the cement user in Texas to the cement maker in Vietnam. Did you notice that the tariffs broke down those negotiations or at least mucked them up a little bit? 100 % broke them down. It put the brakes full on. what's interesting is when you see these global events, it's already hard enough to call a market direction one way the other, because what we're trying to do is we're trying to identify global trade flows. Jeffrey Schwab: ⁓ right decision. Ryan Morrison: ⁓ if you file in the wrong place and your court does not have jurisdiction, it's like hitting reset button on your video game. You gotta start all over again. You don't get to like pick up and like keep calling them to appeals and get to the Supreme Court. ⁓ No, they'll say, whoops, sorry, ⁓ you pushed the wrong button. You filled out the wrong form. again. Brendan Philbin: You're trying to identify supply demand and where ships and vessels are in the world. Or if you're an inland trucking guy or a train person or whatever sort of

modality of transportation you're using, you're trying to read those, you know, obvious economic trends, but they're just hard to read. Then you throw on these black swan events, you throw on these geopolitical situations or these bellwether weather events that, that muck up supply chains. And it, it just, Jeffrey Schwab: Yeah, in fact, some might know that the Supreme Court decision is called not our client VOS selections versus Trump, but in fact, it's learning resources versus Trump. And that actually goes to a jurisdictional question. Learning resources did file in the district court, not the Court of International Trade. their appeal to the Supreme Court was, ⁓ or I guess the administration's appeal to the Supreme Court Brendan Philbin: very quickly slows down everything. So eventually this comes to the consumer. But what happens first is it comes to the industry people, us, the producers, the buyers, the transporters, the traders, particularly the traders first, because their money is exposed into the system right now. So they have to start pumping the brakes because it's their money that's going to get impacted first. They don't know where this cost is going to fall. And that's what starts happening. Those conversations start happening. Well, who's going to bear the Jeffrey Schwab: was consolidated with our case. And so one of the issues actually in the case was whether the Court of International Trade had proper jurisdiction. And the Supreme Court put a lot of thought into that into one footnote that basically said the Court of International Trade obviously has jurisdiction. And I think that point was not contested by a single ⁓ justice. Brendan Philbin: brunt of this. And of course nobody wants to. And the only guy that doesn't have a voice in our conversation is the consumer. So where does it go? It goes to the consumer. Always. So when our fair president, no matter which way you think, that's not my concern. But when he's saying something that I know is fundamentally not going to be the case, it's going to fall on the consumer, the American consumer. Because no one over on the other side is going to Ryan Morrison: But anyway, tell us about going to the Court of International Trade. What was that like? Jeffrey Schwab: So the Court of International Trade is based in New York City. So ⁓ Riley and I went to New York with our co-counsel, Ilya Soman, who was a blogger on VoloConspiracy and a law professor at George Mason. And ⁓ we had about ⁓ an hour and a half ⁓ hearing where I got about 45 minutes to explain to the Court of International Trade why we thought the Brendan Philbin: to bite, they just say, no, well, why do I have to move it to America? I'll move it elsewhere. Jeffrey Schwab: President's tariffs were illegal and ⁓ they were very ⁓ interested in the case, extremely attentive, asked lots and lots of questions. ⁓ so, you know, we had, ⁓ after that we had ⁓ a decision by the Court of International Trade in which all three of the judges, including a Trump-appointed judge, ruled in our favor that the ⁓ Trump tariffs under, we haven't mentioned the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, IEPA, but that was the President's justification and the Court of International Trade said that IEPA does not justify the President's tariffs. Ryan Morrison: Okay, great. So we got a big victory. That's not the end of the story though. So what happened next? Jeffrey Schwab: Well, ⁓ as one does when they lose in the trial court, the president appealed to the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals, ⁓ which ⁓ again is sort of a specialized appellate court in that it is an appellate court for very specific courts like the Court of International Trade. And so ⁓ at that point, ⁓ we were able to onboard some extremely talented appellate court lawyers, Neil Caddyle and ⁓ McConnell, who Michael McConnell is former ⁓ So a ⁓ talented ⁓ oral advocate. So very excited to get of these ⁓ talented lawyers on our team ⁓ work on this, ⁓ of course, important case that that probably involved, we think, probably billions and billions of dollars at stake. So we felt that getting the best legal advocates that we could on our team was important. Ryan Morrison: Yeah, and so how'd that go? I think we got our money's worth, we? Jeffrey Schwab: Yeah, well, we won in the Federal Circuit too. ⁓ Not unanimous like the Court of International Trade, ⁓ but a majority ⁓ of judges. I think it was eight to four, if I'm remembering correctly. think of the 12 judges that were on the panel. And by the way, the Federal Circuit sat on the panel en banc, which means all of the judges. That's unusual ⁓ for a case coming directly on appeal. Usually it's a three-judge panel, but the Federal Circuit on its own motion felt that it was important enough for all of the Federal Circuit judges to sit. Ryan Morrison: Yeah, and I think, you know, even going back to the Court of International Trade, the jurists really understood the gravity of what was going on here. I really think so. That's why they asked a lot of questions, like we'll call it the trial court. But even they're like, let's just skip the whole three judge panel here at the federal circuit and just get everybody on here. I think they just really understood the gravity of what was going Jeffrey Schwab: Yeah, I think that's absolutely right. I guess we should mention that although it took about a year from the time that we filed the case to the time that ultimately the Supreme Court ruled on this case, that is lightning speed in the legal world. ⁓ And all three of the courts that we were before took this case seriously and acted on this case very, very quickly. Ryan Morrison: All right, so we win in the Intermediate Court of Appeals. The president, you know him, he doesn't lay over and give up in the legal world. So what happened next? Jeffrey Schwab: Well, of course, the president decided to go to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court doesn't have to take any case. It doesn't

want to, but it felt like this case was important enough and obviously we thought it was important enough for the Supreme Court to take. all of a sudden we're before the nine justices of the Supreme Court. Ryan Morrison: Yeah, did our council from the Federal Circuit continue on with this up to the Supremes? Jeffrey Schwab: They did and we had Neil Caddiel argue the case before the Supreme Court. ⁓ He did an excellent job. We did have to split because ⁓ we didn't mention this, but there were 12 states that also filed a similar case. That case got consolidated with our case before the federal circuit and then of course was consolidated onto the Supreme Court. So ⁓ our side had to split between Neil and then a lawyer from Oregon who argued half the case before the Supreme Court. Ryan Morrison: And when you say split, we had to split the time. Jeffrey Schwab: That's right. So if I forget what the time was, but half the time was Neal's and half the time was the other lawyer's. Ryan Morrison: But it was more than usual. mean, the Supreme Court was like, this is a big deal. We want to let everybody talk a little bit longer. Jeffrey Schwab: That's right, and the Supreme Court, although it usually sets a time limit, doesn't really have to follow that time limit if it has questions. And of course it had questions, and Riley and I were in the courtroom, and ⁓ I think it probably lasted almost three hours. Ryan Morrison: And that's not the typical length unless it's something really serious. Reilly: And it was very Ryan Morrison: In our next segment, Riley's going to break down the case for us. And we know that we won. That's why we're celebrating this. ⁓ So what were some of the more interesting that happened? Like, did all the clients go? Are there any funny stories about them or about anything that happened at the Supreme Court? Jeffrey Schwab: Yeah, Victor went. I guess funny story, not before the Supreme Court, but the Court of International Trade is when we were going to the Court of International Trade through the security line, it turned out that Victor, our client, VOS Selections, ⁓ brought a corkscrew to federal court. And Riley and I joked about ⁓ forgetting to tell the wine guy not to bring a corkscrew to federal court. Ryan Morrison: Of course. Note to self next time, tell the wine guy not to bring a cord screw. Jeffrey Schwab: And fortunately, the wine guy didn't bring a corkscrew to the Federal Circuit or the Supreme Court, but he was there and he was engaged throughout the entire process. And Victor is a really great guy and a great advocate for ⁓ this case. And you can see he's been on multiple media appearances and ⁓ does a great job of explaining. the harm that the tariffs have caused ⁓ his company and similar small businesses. Ryan Morrison: Well, you went to a lot of course that people don't get to go to very often. Did you pick up any souvenirs? Jeffrey Schwab: Well, I did get, and Riley also got a quill from the Supreme Court, which the advocates get when they argue in the Supreme Court. So we were very excited to get ⁓ that. It's just a feather, but it's symbolic ⁓ of this case and how special it was to work on such ⁓ an important case and to be the ones that sort of started it all at the beginning. ⁓ started this lawsuit, started the legal arguments, wrote the initial briefs, ⁓ it was a nice symbol of that hard work that we put in the last year. Brendan Philbin: And ⁓ we as a in the US, ⁓ we don't have a choice anymore. ⁓ Our choice is, well, stop buying the things that are accustomed to buying. ⁓ And I'm delivering that everybody needs, ⁓ food, ⁓ energy, housing and infrastructure. So how ⁓ you stop that? Jeffrey Schwab: one of my favorite moments from the Supreme Court ⁓ oral argument was when Justice Alito ⁓ ⁓ our lawyer, Neil, ⁓ if he thought he would be the one to restore the non-delegation doctrine. ⁓ ⁓ Neil's response was, heck yes, Justice Alito. ⁓ Which, ⁓ know, for an oral advocate, ⁓ not generally a good idea to say something like, heck yes. to a Supreme Court justice, but I suppose if you've argued before the Supreme Court 60 times, you get that leeway. But I was before some law students a couple of days later, and I told that story, and I had to warn them that their legal advocate professors would not encourage them to do something similar. ⁓ Brendan Philbin: ⁓ I'm glad to see, thanks to you guys, was pushback to it. ⁓ That's what we needed to see. And it had to from this side of the equation. Right. Ryan Morrison: a little too bold, a little too profound for our people coming right out of law school. Jeffrey Schwab: Yeah, and I guess in terms of a souvenir, I like that quote so much that Sarah Albrecht made me a mug with the Liberty Justice Center logo and then the quote, heck yes, Justice Alito. ⁓ But after the Supreme Court decision where Justice Alito joined the dissent, I had to alter that mug by putting no over the yes. So now I have a mug that says, heck no, Justice Alito. Ryan Morrison: Yeah, and for everybody out there, Sarah is the chair of our board of directors. She's very involved board of directors. She's great. All right. So, Jeff, we've won at the Supreme Court. That's got to be the end of it, right? What's next? Jeffrey Schwab: Well, it turns out that there's a lot of money that people had to pay for tariffs that they want back. And of course, our clients ⁓ do want that money back, but there's a lot of others. it turns out that during the time that the case was before the Supreme Court, there were hundreds and hundreds of companies and others filing cases before the Court of International Trade to get refunds, hoping that they would be okay if the Supreme Court ruled in our favor. And so I think at current, currently there's maybe something like 1500 cases ⁓ involving refunds for IEPA tariffs before the Court of International Trade. ⁓ And so ⁓ at the Supreme Court oral argument, Justice Barrett asked what the process would be for getting

refunds. The Supreme Court didn't. really address that, so it left that issue for the lower court. after a little bit of explaining by ⁓ Neal, ⁓ Justice Barrett said, a mess. ⁓ hopefully it won't be a mess. I ⁓ think currently there is, like I said, there's 1,500 cases, but I believe that those cases are all sort of being heard by one judge at the CIT, and that judge is trying to do his best to make this process ⁓ as quick and efficient as possible. But of course, with so many cases, that's a difficulty. And then of course you get into the fact that the federal government isn't the most efficient organization in the world. ⁓ Ryan Morrison: You don't say! Jeffrey Schwab: So ⁓ whether or not they can quickly turn around and refund these tariffs is a whole nother question. And I think if anything holds up refunds, it will be the efficiency or rather the inefficiency of our federal government. Ryan Morrison: Well, the president took the loss like a champ, but he's not giving up. What's going on with round two? Jeffrey Schwab: Well, I mean, without really missing a beat, mean, the president just turned around and imposed, effectively imposed the same tariffs under a different statute. This is what you might have heard section 122 that being thrown around. is section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974. And that allows the president, this is passed in the 1970s after around the time that the United States was getting off the gold ⁓ standard and the Brenton Woods system, and Congress was concerned about ⁓ a potential effectively bank run on US gold reserves when ⁓ under Brenton Woods, ⁓ the US dollar could be converted into gold by foreign countries that held dollars. ⁓ And if there were an excess of US dollars outside held by foreign countries more than they needed, more than they needed to buy US goods, then they'd want to trade them in. But if too many countries started trading them in, then there would be a run on US gold reserves and that was a concern for Congress. So they passed section 122, which effectively allows the president to impose tariffs if there is a balance of payments crisis. And so one issue is what the heck does balance of payments mean. ⁓ And, you know, this is an economics term and I'm not an economist. So we had to turn to some economists and they explained to me that balance of payments is basically all of the payments that the US makes, not just exports or imports of goods and things like that, but everything. And so that was different. than a balance of trade, which is effectively like a trade deficit. So a balance of payments deficit, balance of trade deficit are different things. that. Ryan Morrison: It kind of has something to with currency values, right? Making sure that you get enough yen for my dollar and other types of ⁓ countries. Jeffrey Schwab: Yeah, and again, it is a little bit complex and I'm not an economist, but it does have something to do with that and balance of payments issues are sort of crises, or balance of payments crises really only occur in the fixed rate ⁓ monetary exchange system that we had under Brenton Woods where dollars could be converted into gold. Now we have what's called a floating ⁓ exchange rate system where the price of a dollar is based on the market. if too ⁓ many dollars are held by foreign countries, the value of the dollar goes down and then that would encourage people to buy more dollars because they're cheaper. that. relatively that keeps the the Issues sort of like the currency relatively in balance because it's based on a market a market rate and so now under our floating rate exchange ⁓ System there's not really balance of payments crises and that sort of prompted us to file our new lawsuit ⁓ Which is burlap and barrel versus Trump which challenges the president's ⁓ ⁓ imposition of tariffs under Section 122 because the president says there's a balance of payments crisis because there's a trade deficit. as we just talked about, those are different things. these are new clients. Burlap and Barrel is an importer of spices. ⁓ If you are a fan of the show Shark Tank, you might have seen them on that show. Ryan Morrison: And so these are new clients that we've got now. Jeffrey Schwab: ⁓ But they import spices from all over the world. They work with local farmers. ⁓ They import sort of specialized ⁓ spices. And if you're a chef, you might have ordered from them. Our other client is called Basic Fun. And Basic Fun makes a whole bunch of toys that you probably recognize from your childhood. Things like Care Bears, Lincoln Logs. Light Bright, Pound Puppies, all the classics of your childhood. And of course, most of toys are made overseas now. And so that was a huge expense for Basic Fun. so they wanted to challenge these new tariffs under Section 122. So we have two clients, ⁓ both I think good examples of how the tariffs have hurt their businesses and both I think products that I think the average person would recognize and hopefully understand how the tariffs impact those things. Ryan Morrison: Well, I think you're absolutely right. And so we're going to wrap up here. We really do appreciate you coming in talking to us today, boss, and explaining the background to this case. It was a great achievement for our organization. And we really appreciate your leadership on it and coming in today and telling us all about it. Jeffrey Schwab: Well, I don't think I'm anybody's boss here, but ⁓ it was really a team effort. We had a lot of lawyers and starting with our Liberty Justice Center ⁓ colleagues, Riley and James put in tons of hours, especially at the beginning. ⁓ But ⁓ over, think we might've been, I think we were working on the brief over like 4th of July. think I was working on revising a brief. So, you know, we put in a lot of hours and I think Brendan Philbin: And then the industry side of it. Yeah. As you say, it just became a a complete blockade through information administration and uncertainty that no one knew how to deal

with. ⁓ And Right now we are still dealing with it. It's still kind of there. Nobody knows how to now handle it. Right. Right. As soon as we won our case, I think the next day they just shifted under a new authority and filed new tariffs, which we're of course, we're attacking those now too. But in the meantime, I think another, we shifted our uncertainty to another place and that's refunds. Jeffrey Schwab: know, there were stressful times, but overall it was very much worth it. It was a great case, an important case, and one that ⁓ will live in Liberty Justice Center history, I think, as well as American history. Ryan Morrison: Well said, well said. Thanks for coming in, Joe. Jeffrey Schwab: Thank you. Brendan Philbin: Has that been a clear process from federal government how to get that? No, well you don't hear from them. That's number one. They don't ring you up and tell you, ⁓ hey guys, we owe you money and here's how you get it back. Unfortunately that doesn't happen. ⁓ yeah, thankfully I know you so we can have a few conversations and we've... We've had those conversations. I've kind of explained how it works from my side and I've cross-checked with you and then our customs broker, you know, from an industry awareness side and then a legal side. these two, are both sides seeing the same thing? So we actually know what to do. We do have to file. There's a time bar on that as I understand, right? And these are not small amounts of money. And we're a small company. They're big amounts of money. but the certainty of you the refund back, They say we can and we should, but how long it will take, administrative and bureaucratic task to a massive degree. Yeah. Let's see. I think in one of their last filings, they said around 4 million hours. They could have been nice and put that in years and days, but they didn't. I don't really know. It seems like a long time. It seems like a long time. Right. I'm not sure. ⁓ Yeah, at what point in my calendar will four million hours get me my refund? I'll count backwards. Yeah. maybe we'll have you back to celebrate ⁓ another Tarev victory down the road. plenty more to talk about and yeah, happy to come back and thanks for having me. All right. And I think I'm employed. We stayed away from Notre Dame tailgating stories from the early 2000s. So. Yeah, at least I'll be here again to have our interview next time. Okay, that's good. Yeah, well out of your shot of your boss, then everything should be good. Yeah. All right. Well, thanks so much. Appreciate it. Thanks, Phil. Appreciate it. Thank you. Reilly: Thank you, Ryan. So as you just heard from our colleague Jeff, we had a good time before the Supreme Court. It was a very interesting, edifying experience there on the day, and then we had to wait ⁓ a little bit. And I have to admit, I was wrong about this. ⁓ Ryan, I thought we would get that decision by Christmas. I swore it my wife. I was like, we get to January, I was wrong, and we got to January. And we got to

February, I was really wrong. But on February 20th, Supreme Court issued its decision. ⁓ Six-three, although it's a little more complicated than that, but six justices ultimately voting for our position with a lead opinion by the Chief Justice. ⁓ And I have to say that the Chief Justice's opinion is actually short and sweet. It's only 20 pages. And then there's another 150 pages of other stuff we're gonna go through. But the initial part of this is actually relatively straightforward. Ryan Morrison: That was probably the delay there. we just got one from the chief, you would have won the bet. Reilly: Yeah, I think as you can tell going through this, there's a lot of back and forth in the other opinions, not so much in the Chief Justice's opinion, and I think that's where the delay comes is they're bouncing these opinions back and forth among themselves, particularly as we'll get to Justice Gorsuch's opinion. ⁓ But the Chief's opinion, ⁓ mostly six justices, himself, ⁓ Kagan, ⁓ Barrett, Sotomayor, ⁓ Gorsuch, and Jackson. Did I forget anybody? And they hold that AIPA, the statute under which the president ⁓ implemented most of the tariffs he's implemented since taking office, the majority of them, ⁓ that it doesn't allow tariffs at all. As we have repeatedly pointed out throughout this case, it does not even have the word tariff in it, nor does it have the word duty or tax or any other similar, ⁓ Synonym. Ryan Morrison: Sure, but the president can read, his lawyers can read. So if Tariff is not in there, what made them think they could do it? Was it all about the word regulation? Reilly: Well, yes, actually, turns out what they hung their hat on was the phrase, the statute that says in a time of emergency, the president can regulate importation. Right? And this actually comes as part of a long list of kind of nouns and verbs where it says he can ban, he can put quotas, can license ⁓ all sorts of things. ⁓ if you put the... ⁓ put the ellipses in, but when comes down to the phrase that they were relying on as the idea that the statute says, in a time of emergency, the president can regulate importation, and they took the position that that meant the president could impose whatever tariff he wanted on any set of countries he wanted, for any time he wanted, for any duration, at his personal discretion. And the chief justice, and the majority he's writing for says no to that. Ryan Morrison: Okay, so did they, ⁓ what exactly was the reason behind? Reilly: Well, on the first level, it's the simple fact that the statute doesn't include the word tariff. It doesn't actually authorize tariffs explicitly. And so the question is, does the statute implicitly, within the concept of regulation, allow the president this much wiggle room? And they say no. Now, the reasons that they're saying no are a little bit nuanced because you do have some disagreements here, right? The general... that you have six votes for is that it's not in that statute and we're not consuming it in that statute. The conservatives, justices Roberts, ⁓ Barrett, and Gorsuch, ⁓ invoke something that they've called the Major Question of Doctrine, which is a doctrine which has come up over the past couple decades, particularly in the last decade with student loans, the OSHA case, which the Liberty Justice Center was involved with at the Supreme Court, also the eviction moratorium. Ryan Morrison: Yeah, Jeff mentioned that, Reilly: Also there was some climate change related regulations where presidents faced with a congress that doesn't really do its job have tried to find more more authority in more and more generalities of statutes that give open-ended grants of authority. And the Supreme Court has developed a doctrine called the Major Questions Doctrine that says that congress to quote Cecilia, does not hide elephants and mouse holes. That they would not as part of a ⁓ general grant intend to completely upend the entire American system of government. because tariffs of course are in Article I of the Constitution, which is the powers of Congress. As opposed to Article II, which is where the President gets his power from, there is no tariff authority in Article II because for those of you who remember middle school American history, this country was founded on a tax revolt. And the whole point was people didn't want taxes to come from the King. Ryan Morrison: ⁓ really? They wanted to be able to vote on the representation there, that part. Reilly: Yes, and so the Constitution is actually very clear about this that anything that raises revenue is supposed to go through Congress. That is Congress's prerogative to take our money. And in particular, actually, anything that raises revenue has to start in the House of Representatives, which is supposed to be the more representative of the two congressional bodies. Ryan Morrison: And as anybody has paid their taxes or getting ready to at this time of year, we know Congress knows how to take our money. They don't make it secret. Reilly: Yes, yes, yes, Right, and so that is the basis on which the three conservatives are voting for this. The three liberals with a dissent by Justice Kagan, there's two dissents, but the main one is from Justice Kagan joined by Justice Sotomayor and Jackson. Where Justice Kagan a second, we don't need the major questions, doctor, we don't need anything fancy. ⁓ We the statute, the statute doesn't have the word tariff in it. The word regulate, you the problem, as they out with, saying that the word regulate includes the power of tax, well, the word regulate is all over the United States code, right? So when the SEC has authority to regulate securities, does that mean the SEC can make up whatever taxes on the stock market it wants without going through Congress? That seems like a problem. Ryan Morrison: It does. Reilly: It's all of a sudden, you know, President Bernie Sanders, you know, implements a securities tax unilaterally without Congress because he wants to

tax Wall Street. I don't know that, I don't know that, you know, the dissenters in this case will enjoy that eventuality, but they don't seem worried about it. Ryan Morrison: Sure, sure. And then the dissent, know, there was the Justices, Thomas, Alito and Kavanaugh, they read ⁓ regulation a little bit differently. Help me sleep tonight, Riley. I usually agree with those guys, what was going on there. Reilly: Sure, so as I said, the dissent from, the concurrence from Justice Kagan and her two ⁓ Democratic appointed colleagues is basically saying we get to this outcome without using these conservative doctrines that we don't like. The dissent from Justices Kavanaugh, Alito, and Thomas, and then there's a separate opinion by Thomas we'll get to, but the main opinion from Justice Kavanaugh, I think it goes down a couple roads. The first is, that Justice Kavanaugh points to the fact that this language was previously relied on by a lower court to uphold President Nixon's tariffs in the 1970s. When President Nixon ⁓ had to deal with an emergency ⁓ shock under the Bretton Woods system that ⁓ Jeff mentioned in his interview, ⁓ he implemented tariffs under a previous statute that had similar language to IEPA. The actual, core regulatory interpretation language is actually in there. And he says that and he says, and I think the biggest thing in both Justice Kavanaugh, the big thread in both Justice Kavanaugh and Justice Thomas' opinions is the idea that this is about foreign policy, right? You have basically two strains of conservative jurisprudence running into each other, right? The concern with ⁓ the creations of executive power that Justice Roberts and the majority are invoking, whereas Justice Kavanaugh and Thomas, are invoking an idea that is in a lot of conservative jurisprudence that the president has a great deal more authority when it comes to foreign affairs and since tariffs touch foreign affairs on some level, they are more deferential to the president in that context. Ryan Morrison: Yeah, Justice Kavanaugh really had a tough time accepting that the president could establish an embargo of goods from China, but he could not tariff them, right? Reilly: Yes, yes, and the president actually, the president noticed this part of Justice Kavanaugh's opinion, I guess, because he has made a point of this too repeatedly, including in his press conference responding to the opinion that day, said, you know, that under this decision, I can ban imports from China, but I cannot put a $1 tax on those imports. And the implication is that's an absurdity, that, you know, if you could take the more extreme action, why couldn't you take the more minimal action? Ryan Morrison: Sure, but one is kind of more outward foreign policy-facing and the other is more inward, we're taxing you kind of type-facing. Reilly: Right, right. So that's one problem with their argument. I agree is that, you know, things like banning imports or putting or licensing or putting quotas, that sounds to sound more like a foreign policy action than putting a tax that is paid by Americans, let's remember. There's been a lot of debate, I know, where the administration has tried to argue that these taxes are paid ultimately by foreign countries. But I as a practical matter, the people who write the checks are our clients. Victor, who Jeff mentioned, when he gets a container of wine showed up at port, he had to write the check to get off the boat. Ryan Morrison: Yeah, yeah, it is the people that actually take possession of the goods once they arrive. Reilly: And the other thing I think is important to explain is that it makes perfect sense actually in this context that Congress would give the president extreme powers but not minimum powers because this is an emergency statute. It's meant to deal with emergencies. It's meant to deal with crises, situations where a 5 % increase in the tariff rate on textiles is not going to solve your problem, right? And so in that situation, you actually want to only give the extreme powers because those powers come with their own kind of limitation, right? If the president bans all goods from China tomorrow, that's gonna all of a sudden have repercussions for people who open up amazon.com and everything else and all of a sudden can't get their toys for Christmas and everything else, right? And so the president would only do that in an actual crisis, right? So the... Refusal to give the smaller power actually is its own limitation on the use of the power to restrain on the president's abuse of emergency powers actually. Ryan Morrison: Now, Justice Gorsuch had some things to say as well. Tell us about his opinion. Reilly: Yes, yes, yes. Another niche legal podcast out there referred to this as the festivus opinion, the airing of the grievances. ⁓ Yes, because Justice Gorsuch, and I think this is what took a great deal of time, because Justice Gorsuch, ⁓ he joins the majority, but then he writes extensively to explain to each of his other colleagues why they are wrong. Ryan Morrison: ⁓ yes. That's always fun. Go in the office the next day, like, you know, you're wrong and you're wrong and you're wrong. I'm right. Reilly: Yes, yes, I think Justice Barrett in particular appreciated it because if read her opinion, her opinion is separately simply responding to Justice Gorsuch, right? So, Justice Gorsuch goes through his disagreements with his colleagues. First, with the liberals, he looks at them and says, wait a second, ⁓ today you are concerned about the president's ⁓ abuse and vague language to expand his authority. Where were you on the student loan case? Where were you? ⁓ with the OSHA vaccine mandate, with the eviction moratorium, to which Justice Kagan has her responses about how those statutes were different and the language in those statutes was more amenable. The student loan case, the statute said that the president could waive or modify payments, and so that language, she would argue, is a

stronger hook than the president has here for tariffs. ⁓ But Justice Gorsuch ⁓ says, no, no, no, you just like the one policy, like the other. His objection to Barrett is a bit nerdy, actually. It comes to this thing called the Major Question Doctrine. Justice Gorsuch views it as a substantive legal doctrine that has force and weight as a theory of the law. Justice Barrett says, really, is that what we're doing here? Or is what we're doing here simply saying that if Congress is going to give awesome, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence as Carl Sagan would say. And the president, when he's claiming awesome powers, he has to a very good, a very clear grant of that from Congress. She sees it as just a normal, common sense way you read statutes. Ryan Morrison: And it could be both. mean, it wouldn't make common sense that if ⁓ Congress is going to give the president extraordinary power, that they would make it explicit instead of implicit or, you know, hide it and bury it in the language. Reilly: Yes, yes, yes, and to Justices Kavanaugh, Alito, and Thomas, Justice Gorsuch has his own further objections. He objects to their history, he objects to ⁓ their deference to president, and he also, essentially calls them hypocrites. He says, in the inverse of the liberals, He says, wait, you were so bothered by President Biden's eviction moratorium and student loan payment forgiveness and OSHA vaccine mandate, but here you're not bothered at all. Funny how that works, think Justice Gorsuch is basically saying. I don't know necessarily that Justice Kavanaugh has a good answer for that. mean, he, or Justice Thomas, but Justice Kavanaugh, he essentially falls back on the idea that this is going to be, he actually quotes the language that Justice Barrett used about being a mess to do all these tariffs. And I think it doesn't need to be a mess, I don't think, because the government has the money and it has the records of who paid the money and it can send the money back, right? We are currently, as we said, we're definitely litigation over that and if anyone out there ⁓ has paid some tariffs and is trying to figure out how get them back, we do have the project tariff page on our website, which you'll hear more about later in the show. But... Kavanaugh basically says that we're going to create a disaster by having the government have to pay back. I think the estimate is it's about $175 billion. ⁓ Ryan Morrison: Well, I don't think it's ever a disaster when the government has to give people their money back that they shouldn't have had in the first place, but that's just me. Reilly: Well, I think the important point to say is that if it is a mess, that's a good reason not ⁓ to take hundreds of billions of dollars from Americans ⁓ under dubious statutory authority because you might have to pay it back. Ryan Morrison: Do it in the first place. Indeed, indeed. Well, I appreciate Justice Scorsese trying to keep it real. Let's just hope keeping it real doesn't go wrong on him. ⁓ So anyway, any other finer points there on the, on the, the Supreme Court had to say, Riley? Reilly: Well, I think the bottom line and the theme from going through this case and also the OSHA case that we worked on and some of the other ones that we've mentioned in this regard is the Supreme Court is really looking actually not at the president here in their heart of hearts. What they're really talking to is Congress. Justice Gorsuch in particular, you can tell, is talking to Congress and they're saying, Congress, this is really your fault because you've stopped doing your job. They don't pass laws, they don't reform laws, they could have ⁓ cleaned up this tariff mess and given the president whatever tariff powers they wanted to give him or taken them away and clarified this at any point in this process. But in fact, Ryan Morrison: Yeah, and this is not a recent problem. It's been going on for years. Reilly: but yeah, if I leave the answer to anything, I would say we are very proud of this case and we are very proud that we were able to do this. I'm a big believer in ⁓ the American legal system ⁓ and the to use constitutional litigation ⁓ to our government in check. That's why I do this work. ⁓ But we will never solve these problems until Congress starts doing its job again.