Think of a home loan due on Star Date 2075. I'm David Brancaccio in Los Angeles. President Trump and Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte are floating the idea of home loans that take 50 years to pay back instead of the usual, say, 30 or 15. Monthly payments could be lower, but there's a catch.

Some will use the phrase tradeoff. Marketplaces Carla Javier has some of the math.

The interest rates on longer loans would be higher because they're riskier. And buyers would

ultimately owe lenders more money, says Realtor.com's Joel Berner.

Over the life of the loan, a 50-year mortgage is about 86% more interest than a 30-year loan.

And that's just a lot of money that's going to the bank.

He says another potential drawback is that home buyers would build equity more slowly.

If home prices fell after, you know, a couple of years on a mortgage, a 30-year mortgage might still be in a position where the value of the home is high enough to keep the buyer from being underwater.

But over the first 10 years or so of payments on a 50-year mortgage, it's almost all interest.

Though longer mortgages could offer buyers more flexibility,

says Robert Van Order, formerly of Freddie Mac, now at George Washington University.

If you think 50 years is too long, you can always send in extra payments. Which go towards the

principal. And then if you need some better cash flow, you can just stop doing that for a while.

But actually getting one of these long loans could be tricky.

In a statement, the Mortgage Bankers Association said such mortgages wouldn't be considered

qualified for purchase by Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, and lenders might be less likely to offer them.

I'm Carla Javier for Marketplace.

Now to a teachable moment embedded in the closely watched Supreme Court case now,

testing whether a president can increase tariffs, import taxes, by calling a trade deficit and emergency. One of the friend of the court or amicus curie contributions to the high court's

understanding came from a group of 47 economists from across the ideological spectrum, including

four Nobel laureates in economics, two former Fed chiefs, and one Treasury Secretary. Let's

learn more by bringing in my colleague, Marketplace's Sabri Beneshore. Hey, Sabree. Hi, David.

...