I'm John Batchel with Mary Kessel, Executive Vice President Stevenson,

Cooperated,

former senior advisor to the Secretary of State.

There's nothing fixed about trade.

I mention it, Mary, just to note that it's a moving story.

The Supreme Court decision, the changeable nature of the bilateral relationships that are being carved out. And the general assumption,

still, that tariffs are not a positive for the economy, general assumption. Tariffs are at tax,

general assumption. All of this between now and the midterms needs to be resolved, or the midterms are going opposite the president's intentions. Do you see tariffs at this point? This is a tough call, Mary. That's why I'm giving it to you.

Do you see tariffs at this point, a positive or negative or not bothering the American people at all?

They have other things to worry about, like inflation.

You know, just from my experience with the companies I'm involved in, it's not so much the

tariffs, it's the unpredictability of the policy. You know, businesses need to plan capital

investment, hiring, expansion, M&A, et cetera. And when you don't know what your cost is going to, costs are

going to be, that makes that very difficult. And I think that it's part of the explanation for the

stuck labor market that we have and the anxiety that consumers are feeling. The Supreme Court's

decision injects a little more certainty into the tariff process because now the president and his trade representative and commerce will have to use sections of U.S. law that are long established that require investigations that, you know, corporate America is frankly used to.

I think moving forward, once tariffs are in place, they're really

hard to remove because the Republicans who are Democrats really like money coming into the coffers

and they like to have special carve-outs for companies in their district. And so I think,

you know, my fear is that we, after President Trump, you know, what happens here to this structure?

It's complicated.

It benefits lawyers, benefits big companies that can deal with the compliance issues.

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