WSJ What’s News - Trump Vows New 10% Tariffs After Supreme Court Loss

Episode Date: February 20, 2026

P.M. Edition for Feb. 20. After the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the president exceeded his powers when he imposed global tariffs, Trump responded by announcing 10% global tariffs under a different legal authority. WSJ economic policy reporter Gavin Bade breaks down what happened and the implications. Plus, U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that between 15,000 to 20,000 people are now at large in Syria after an ISIS detention camp collapsed. And Florida Rep. María Elvira Salazar is one of few Republicans saying that Trump’s hard-line deportation policies might cost the GOP the midterms. Journal political reporter Sabrina Rodriguez tells us what she discussed with Salazar in a recent interview. Alex Ossola hosts. Sign up for the WSJ's free What's News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Plus, the Supreme Court rules that President Trump's global tariffs are illegal. President Trump responds with more tariffs. Other alternatives will now be used to replace the ones that the court incorrectly rejected. We have alternatives. Great alternatives. Could be more money. We'll take in more money and will be a lot stronger for it. And meet the Republican Congresswoman pushing back on Trump's immigration policies.

It's Friday, February 20th. I'm Alex Osala for the Wall Street Journal. This is the PM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories that move the world today. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled today that President Trump's tariffs are illegal. In its six to three decision, the justices found that the president went too far in enacting his most sweeping tariffs without clear authorization from Congress. the first time the Supreme Court has definitively struck down one of Trump's second-term policies. For more, on the implications of the ruling, I'm joined now by WSJ Economic Policy Reporter, Gavin Bade.

Gavin, the case involved two categories of tariffs, one that Trump imposed on pretty much every country in the world, ostensibly to repair trade deficits, and the other on Mexico, Canada, and China connected to fentanyl. Are there tariffs that aren't affected by this ruling? Yes. Notably, Trump's tariffs on individual industries, those are like the tariffs on steel and aluminum, on cars and car parts, on trucks, on copper, on lumber. Those are under a different legal authority completely unrelated to this case. Those remain in place. Did the ruling say what happens to the tariffs that companies have already paid? No, it did not. And that is a big point of contention here. You have over a thousand companies that have already filed. in court saying, we want refunds if these tariffs are struck down. The Supreme Court did not weigh in to say what happens. This means that it will probably be litigated in lower courts.

And the president said at a press conference that you'll probably be in court for five years sorting this out. So whether or not that means that they're going to fight this tooth and nail for that long, I am not sure. But there's no easy resolution to the refunds issue, at least in the short term. Speaking of that press conference, another thing that came out of it, was that President Trump announced new tariffs, including a 10% global tariff with a different legal basis. Do we at this point expect those to stand? At this point, I think those tariffs, the new ones he announced are more legally defensible than the ones that were struck down. So he announced there's two sets of tariffs that he's talking about.

The first one, it's under what's called Section 122. And this allows the president to impose tariffs for up to 100. 150 days. It's very time limited. He said we will impose a 10% tariff across the globe. So kind of reinstituting his global minimum tariff that he had done under IEPA, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. So that tariff authority will act as a stopgap while they get other tariffs ready. And those other tariffs will come under what's called Section 301 of the Trade Act. that is also a very legally defensible option. There are many tariffs already on the books under Section 301.

It's also what Trump used in his first term for tariffs on China. But the whole thing is you have to do an investigation. You have to gather evidence. You have to write a report. So that all takes time. Trump wants to do these things immediately. So he has this kind of one, two step. Okay, we've got our temporary tariffs, and then we will come back and have the longer

lasting ones later. How does this really affect how companies will obviously? operate in this tariff environment? I don't think it'll affect a lot in the short term, right? No one's going to make major investment decisions or maybe even shipping decisions based on this. There's still a lot of work to be done here and a lot of open questions as to how they will try to reconstitute this tariff regime. I think what he was trying to tell international markets and governments abroad is that

even if it's not under this law, you can be sure of one thing and that's I'm going to have tariffs on you. Right, and trade specialists have said that U.S. businesses are still paying tariffs despite the ruling and the changes because it'll take a little time to sort everything out. I think the most damaging thing for him and his team is just that they have now been shown a limit to their power. Trump wanted to use these tariffs to exert his own personal authority over the entire global economy. Now they have been pegged back. They have been told that is not the case. You are not all powerful in the global economy.

Actually, Congress didn't give you this authority. That was WSJ reporter Gavin Bade. Thanks, Gavin. Thanks, Alex. It's been a volatile day for U.S. markets. Major stock indexes initially climbed after the Supreme Court decision was announced, fell ahead of Trump's press conference, then recovered ground after he announced plans for new trade duties. In the end, stocks finished the day near session highs. Among the indexes, the NASDAQ led the gains, adding 0.9%. New data out from the Commerce Department today show an economy with slowing growth and rising inflation. U.S. gross domestic product, the value of all goods and services produced across the economy, rose at a 1.4% annual rate in the final quarter of last year. That was much weaker than what the Atlanta Fed had modeled, which we noted in this morning show, and was a sharp slowdown from the 4.4%

growth in the previous quarter. And the Federal Reserve's preferred gauge showed that inflation rose at the end of last year. The personal consumption expenditures price index increased by 0.4% in December, higher than November's 0.2% rise and roughly in line with analysts' forecasts. The data underscores why many Fed officials have turned cautious about supporting further interest rate cuts. Heads up that we dropped a special bonus episode earlier today. In the latest what's news and earnings, we look at what the earnings reports of some of the country's biggest home builders tell us about the health of the U.S. housing market. That's in your what's news feed now.

Coming up, could Trump's aggressive immigration policies cost Republicans the midterms? One GOP representative thinks so. That's after the break. We're exclusively reporting that as many as 20,000 people are now at large in Syria after an exodus from a camp that held jihadist families. That's according to U.S. officials familiar with an estimate from U.S. intelligence agencies. Security experts have long warned that the wives of Islamic State fighters were effectively raising the next generation of militants at the Al-Hul facility. Security at the camp fell apart in recent weeks after Syria's government defeated the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic forces, which had guarded Al Hull for years. The Syrian government has acknowledged that many people left the camp for other parts of the country and says it plans to monitor any extremists and reintegrate them into society. There are few Republicans criticizing the White House's approach to immigration enforcement, but one of them represents one of the country's most Hispanic districts.

Florida Representative Maria Elvira Salazar recently told the Wall Street Journal she's seen the fallout from Trump's hardline deportation policies play out in her own district. And she's worried it might cost her party the midterms. Journal Political reporter Sabrina Rodriguez recently sat down with Salazar in Washington and is here to tell us more. Sabrina, what is Salazar's background? How did she get to Congress? So Zalazar is a product of the community that she's representing. She's Cuban-American, Republican, and for decades, she was a Spanish-language broadcast journalist. She was a big household name for folks in her district, and it was in 2018 that she launched her first bid to be a congresswoman.

She lost that race, but when she ran in 2020, she won and has really made inroads in the community since then. As I mentioned Salazar said she's worried that the Trump administration's approach to immigration could cost their party, the midterms. What's her basis for thinking that? She is still a big supporter of the president, but she's very concerned because of the way that the deportations are being carried out. She felt that his promise was he'd focus on criminals, and she's seeing in her community and across the country the way that this administration is focusing on all people who are in the country illegally

and not just people who have necessarily committed crimes in the country and just seeing folks in the community who are starting to get turned off to the president and turned off to the party because of what they're seeing. So Salazar has introduced a bill called the Dignity Act that would effectively result in immigration reform. What's in it? So she has a piece of legislation. It's bipartisan.

It has, you know, over 35 co-sponsors, has been embraced by a lot of business groups. So her bill is sort of this middle ground where she would offer a form of legal status for people in the country illegally, but would also not be offering them a pathway to citizens. necessarily. When I sat down with her last week, she got into the specifics of what this bill, the Dignity Act, looks like. You are not going to be American. I am not going to give you any federal

programs. I am not going to allow you to use our health care system. You have to pay for your crimes. You have to pay a fine. You have to give me 1% of your salary. And then I'm going to give you the dignity status. It's not amnesty. It's dignity. How's her bill going over in Congress so far? Right now, there hasn't been that much traction for it. Her belief, as she says it, is that if she could get the president on board and the White House on board, Congress would follow, especially as polls show that he's losing ground on this issue, which is one of the ones that helped bolster his candidacy in 2024. That's something that the Congresswoman and I talked about. In recent election cycles, we've seen Republicans make inroads with the Hispanic community. And she's eager to see the party continue in that tradition.

One out of two, 55% of Hispanic males voted for Trump, and now they're disillusioned because we cannot conflate the gangster with the Gardner or the nanny with the narco or the construction worker with a coyote. You cannot do that. And unfortunately, that happened. So now we have to course correct and send the right message that the Hispanics are welcomed once again in the GOP. She talks about the fact that in her conversations with other Republicans, there is an acknowledgement about the need to address this. She feels like the time is coming where they're going to have to accept that there needs to be a middle ground on this issue. That was journal reporter Sabrina Rodriguez. Thanks, Sabrina.

Thank you. And that's what's news for this week. Tomorrow you can look out for our weekly markets wrap up, what's news in markets. Then on Sunday, we'll be discussing a growing trend of countries looking to build their own digital technologies, to reduce their dependence on the U.S. private sector. That's in What's News Sunday. And we'll be back with our regular show on Monday morning. Today's show is produced by Pierre Bienname

with supervising producer, Jana Heron. Michael LaValle wrote our theme music. Isha El Mouslip is our development producer. Chris Zinsley is our deputy editor, and Falana Patterson is the Wall Street Journal's head of news audio. I'm Alex Oscella. Thanks for listening.