Authored by Peter Tchir via AcademySecurities.com,

Back to the latest tariff news impacting markets.

This seems to be a good summary of what occurred (from Bloomberg.com)

In a ruling issued late Wednesday, a three-judge panel for the US Court of International Trade declared that the Trump administration had wrongly invoked a 1977 law in imposing his “Liberation Day” tariffs on dozens of countries and they were therefore illegal. It also extended that ruling to previous tariffs levied on Canada, Mexico and China over the security of the US border and trafficking in fentanyl.

In the coming hours and days, we will likely see this challenged, while we try and figure out what it means.

As a starting point:

So, in theory we should be “celebrating” this ruling which could mean that tariffs can no longer be used in the way they have been? It has seemed strange so that so much power was concentrated in the hands of the President on this particular issue (the ability to cause massive disruptions in global trade, without any of  the usual checks and balances, seemed odd). We’ve argued that we would prefer much more to be done via Congress than via Executive Order (primarily for the staying power those policies would have, versus EO’s which can easily be reversed).

But maybe it is just the inherent contrarian in me, but I’m not overly excited about the news.

Then, and maybe this is more cynical, or just a deeper concern, but I cannot help but think about Nobody Puts Baby in a Corner.

Maybe not the first thing that came to mind, when the ruling hit the tape, but Nobody Puts Baby in a Corner is competing for space with Taco, Taco Man, I gotta be a Taco Man (in regards to chatter about the Trump Always Chickens Out trade).

This makes me nervous:

One can only hope it is the latter (and the pivot is in full swing), but the stock market enthusiasm for the ruling may be short lived, as the ruling may have just backed a fighter into a corner, and you can say or think whatever you want about Donald Trump, but he is one heck of a fighter!

To be perfectly honest, it scares me that we haven’t seen a response on Truth Social already. A knee jerk reaction, however aggressive, would almost be the “norm”, which makes me think a much bigger storm is brewing. Ironically, that would be better for rates – what a crazy, topsy turvy world we live in.

In theory, given the T-reports evolving views on tariffs, this is something we should be viewing as a positive, but are really, really struggling to get to that interpretation for the reasons listed above.

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This month’s Around the World with Academy Securities was published yesterday. We cover the Middle East, Iran’s Nuclear Negotiations, Russia/Ukraine Ceasefire, tensions with China, and Fighting in the Congo.