Has Trump just been humiliated by his own judges?

0:00And now, another appliance triumph from your friends at Grand Appliance. Meet Jan. Her fridge died days before a dinner party, but she didn't panic. I just called my guy at Grand Appliance. He recommended a large capacity GE profile option with fingerprint resistant stainless steel and a convertible middle drawer. I can optimize for meat, beverages, snacks or wine. Best of all, it was in stock and they delivered next day. Another crisis averted by Grand Appliance. Shop GrandAppliance.com to learn more. This is a Global Player original podcast. The whole thing is a farce. I talk about petulance.

0:39It was 10 % two days ago, maybe 20 % tomorrow. I mean, this is madness. He's flailing. He's a punch drunk boxer. He's just, you know, he's just trying to hit anything. A shadow. And he's a shadow of himself. He's lost a step or two. That is Gavin Newsom, the governor of California. And no prizes for guessing who he's talking about. The president, Donald Trump, and the rebuff served up to him by the Supreme Court over tariffs. Last week, it struck down the backbone of Trump's economic policy and the president took it pretty well. Just joking. He really didn't. Welcome to the News Agents.

1:21The News Agents. It's John. It's Emily. And it was a long awaited decision by the Supreme Court who, when they were hearing the case last year, you could tell that the justices thought hang on a minute the way Donald Trump has introduced these tariffs is all wrong and what Donald Trump had done was to use emergency economic legislation to say there's a national security emergency we need to impose these tariffs now on all these countries around the world and finally the Supreme Court came back and ruled and by a majority of six to three, they said, no, you cannot impose tariffs using this legislation, which means, of course, that the US government has raised hundreds of billions of dollars from companies in America who've had to pay those tariffs illegally.

2:16And presumably now the US government is going to get it's our suit. Yeah, 130 billion is the figurative number that they estimate has been raised by those tariffs so far. I'm going to take you inside the Supreme Court ruling because it's just quite interesting to dive into this. What they point out was that when Trump first brought in these tariffs under what they call the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, he'd cited two things. He cited drugs, the influx of illegal drugs from Canada, Mexico and China, which he said had created a public health crisis. And he'd also talked about trade deficits to American manufacturing, which had led to the hollowing out of the industry.

3:02And essentially, the Supreme Court has written this pretty elegant wording. It's 170 pages long. You can read the whole thing yourself. And it's just said, sorry, you can do that for a very, very specific short amount of time under emergency legislation, you cannot do that full time without getting the approval of Congress. And this never went through Congress. So the burning question is, if Trump had felt so confident about what he was doing, if his party was on side, and he's got a majority in the House and the Senate, why didn't he get it through Congress? Because he knew he couldn't, because a lot of Republicans didn't really like what Trump was doing.

3:39And so as a result of this ruling, essentially they have said, they've gone back to the Trade Act of 1974, which says you can only slap tariffs on for 150 days. What's that? Six months. Maximum of that. That is your emergency timeframe contained. So Trump then decides, A, to get really, really angry and start slagging off all the members of the Supreme Court. We're going to hear that in a second. And then he immediately slaps a 10 % tariff on everyone on the Friday, which he then raises within 24 hours to 15 % on the Saturday. But let's give you a flavour of just how Trump took that news when it landed ahead of the weekend.

4:21Supreme Court's ruling on tariffs is deeply disappointing. And I'm ashamed of certain members of the court, absolutely ashamed for not having the courage to do what's right for our country. Foreign countries that have been ripping us off for years are ecstatic. They're so happy. And they're dancing in the streets, but they won't be dancing for long. So the Supreme Court justices, who Donald Trump say should be ashamed of themselves, include two Supreme Court justices, very conservative, who Donald Trump appointed himself in the first term. Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett. Only Brett Kavanaugh, who Donald Trump appointed last time round, voted for the tariffs to remain in place.

5:11But it's really interesting what Neil Gorsuch has written, because we've talked a lot about Donald Trump and how he thinks that he has got impunity to do whatever he wants and that no one is ever going to stand up for him. And remember, this is the Supreme Court that more or less did give him legal immunity from prosecution in his act as president. And everyone thought the Supreme Court was totally controlled by Donald Trump. This time it showed its independence. And Neil Gorsuch wrote, for those who think it is important for the nation to impose more tariffs, I understand that today's decision will be disappointing.

5:48But if history is any guide, the tables will turn and the day will come when those disappointed by today's result will appreciate the legislative process for the bulwark of liberty it is. In other words, this is for Congress to decide. It's not the president on a whim who decides whether tariffs should be imposed across the world to all these different countries. It is for Congress to do this. And that is an assertion of the balance of powers, which we thought had disappeared in America. And that is why this Supreme Court judgment is so important. I mean, the German Chancellor, Friedrich Mertz, was asked for his views on the Supreme Court ruling.

6:28And he told journalists the separation of powers in the US still appears to be functioning. And that's good news. Imagine having to say that out loud, though. I mean, the three arms, the three the three co-equal branches, if you like, of government, the judiciary, the legislature and the executive. in people's minds have disappeared into one, which is just a Donald Trump-shaped pillar. And to have a German chancellor going, oh, well done, round of applause for the Supreme Court because they actually recognise the importance of having Congress's approval rather than an authoritarian kind of strike by Trump.

7:09It is an extraordinary place to be, actually. But I think what this moment opens up, apart from Trump to utter ridicule, not least in the way he's talking about the justices, not least in the way he's talking about they should be ashamed they've embarrassed their families. What was this great thing that's ridiculous, poorly written and extraordinarily anti-American decision? I think it opens him up clearly to not just legal weakness, but to political weakness. But it raises this question of what everyone else does now. And one of the things I always think is really interesting with Trump in his second term is actually not what he says, because obviously he talks a lot of shite, right?

7:52I mean, frankly spoken, he contradicts himself from one moment to the next. But it's what the rest of us do. It's how the rest of the world responds to what Trump says out loud or to what his decisions are now. and there is a world in which, you know, the EU says about their imminent trade deal, oh, sod that. There is a world in which the UK kind of goes, well, what's the any point in having any of the dialogue? Well, the UK government today is talking about perhaps putting reciprocal 15 % tariffs on American goods. So it's got no... There's a bravery, in other words. There is a bravery that is coming from this decision.

8:29Potentially. Potentially, which means the rest of the world suddenly finds a bit of backbone, right? Absolutely. And this is, you know, this is to be watched. So Trump having thought he's sorted this out. I mean, obviously, Trump always doubles down. He never says I've been beaten. I'm defeated. This is a huge setback. He said it was very disappointing. But look, I can do even worse things. And as for the bit you said, Emily, about him contradicting himself and not making a whole lot of sense. Can I just read you? Because we often just do one or two lines of Trump, whereas there's a punchy soundbite or whatever.

9:00This is what he has just posted, you know, in the last hour on Truth Social. The Supreme Court brackets will be using lowercase letters for a while based on a complete lack of respect of the United States. Accidentally and unwittingly gave me as president of the United States far more powers and strength than I had prior to their ridiculous, dumb and very internationally divisive ruling. For one thing, I can use licences to do absolutely terrible things to foreign countries, especially those countries that have been ripping us off for many decades. But incomprehensibly, according to the ruling, can't charge them a licence fee.

9:35But all licences charge fees. Why can't the United States do so? And so it goes on. And I'm trying to work out what on earth he's saying and what it all adds up to. OK, I mean, yeah, it's a hard task. I think I think if you get to the bottom of it, there is some logic in it, which is that there are certain areas like steel or aluminium where you can actually charge what you want. So that's essentially what happened to the UK. In that trade deal, in brackets, negotiated with the help of one Peter Mandelson, former ambassador in Washington, which everyone praised as being extraordinary and wonderful.

10:13And wasn't it incredible that, you know, somehow Starmer had shot to the top of the list? What people forget was that, yes, we got a 10 % trade deal, whatever that means, a 10 % tariff deal, but the price on aluminium and on steel was stubbornly high at 25%. We never got that negotiated down. It always stood out as being, you know, the kind of the rock between any sort of future proper trading relations, right? And so I guess that is what he's actually meaning now, that he can still do this to individual areas of the supply chain. Maybe that's what he means by licences. But to your point, there are a lot of places where they're just putting these trade deals together and they're not yet ratified.

10:58So, for example, I think Japan has just done a deal with the US. India has just done a deal with the US. I mean, India got its trade deal down from 50 to 18 percent. I mean, what was it doing at 50? But anyway, will it stay there? Will it go? Yeah, we'll sign that up now and pay 18 percent. Or will they say, sod this. This man's literally been called out by his own court. We don't have to do that at all. The Brazilian Lula da Silva, you know, the Brazilian president who is no fan of Trump, has just gone. I'm not signing anything. I'm glad I wasn't at the front of the queue. Ironically. Look, pity the poor Swiss prime minister who turns up at the White House with a gold bar with 47 written on it.

11:41and a rolex gold clock is that true 100 so so and in return for which their tariffs came down from 38 to 15 they're now back at 15 as they would have been the swiss have given away a gold bar with the number 47 on it and a rolex gold clock for no reason whatsoever whose gold bar was it well exactly but but you could see the swiss were thinking it's honestly it's pay to play it's bribery. We'll give you a gold bar. Can you reduce our tariffs? This is what the madness that was going on prior to this. And now America is back to square one on the tariffs. And it's no wonder on Friday when the Supreme Court judgment came out, stock market went flying upwards because they thought at last sanity is going to prevail.

12:29And of course, in the 24 hours since then, as you say, Emily, the 10 % tariffs have become 15 % tariffs. And as we heard Gavin Newsom at the top of the show saying who knows where they'll go next it can't i mean 15 according to the legal ruling is the maximum that he can impose for 150 days i mean obviously he'll probably try and do all sorts of things but i think the interesting part of this is as you say corporate america is the place that has felt the brunt of the pain and the new york federal reserve research suggests that US businesses and consumers have paid 90 % of the cost of the tariffs.

13:08So if you are a small American business now, and there are about 200 ,000 who've been here saying, well, do we get to claw this back? Do we get compensation? Do we get refunds? Yeah, great that the stock market's gone up because we don't have to pay it anymore. But if it's$130 billion, do they get to see that again? And they're going to try. They're not just part of a sort of political wrangle like the EU or like Japan or like whatever. They're kind of saying, well, can we actually claw that money back from the government? The government has taken money from American businesses. There is one critical piece of understanding that people need to have about tariffs.

13:44And I'm sure everyone gets it. But although tariffs are imposed on the countries exporting, the cost are paid for by American consumers. But if there is a 15 percent, 20 percent tariff on jeans, jeans coming in and you go to Walmart and your jeans cost 20 percent more because of the tariffs, then you, the consumer, are paying it. And if America, you know, Donald Trump's approval ratings are in the toilet right now. Why? Because of the affordability crisis, which is what the Democrats are making all the noise about. But why is there an affordability crisis? Because of tariffs have raised the cost on American goods and consumers are having to bear the brunt of it.

14:24Do you remember at the very beginning of the tariff conversation, Amazon said, we're going to show you exactly what's happened to the price by adding on in brackets the cost of the tariff. And for some reason, that little plan disappeared. Caroline Levitt, Trump's spokesman, I think said it was a very anti-American thing. and Jeff Bezos, the Amazon owner, appeared to agree. So that ruse disappeared. But it would have been a really simple way of showing every consumer exactly what the cost of the goods were compared to the cost of the tax. And this is where there is such a gap of Donald Trump's inconsistency because he loves the rhetoric around tariffs because it looks like he is punishing the rest of the world.

15:06And a lot of people in America sign up for that. What Americans haven't signed up to is going to the supermarket or to the department store or wherever it happens to be, and finding that the basket of goods they want to buy costs a hell of a lot more because many of them are going to be foreign goods and are going to be costing a lot more money. And there were those who thought that actually Donald Trump might kind of think this is a way off the hook of tariffs by the Supreme Court ruling against him, just saying, OK, yeah, the Supreme Court wrecked my keynote economic policy, brackets, prices come down, everyone's happy.

15:39But he's doubling down. He still believes that tariffs is the way to go. And so it will continue. I do think the sort of detail of what's happened is critical. But the bigger picture is the thing that we should be talking about, which is fundamentally, where does this leave Trump in terms of his power? Right. Authority. Authority. This was a key economic plank. He talked about tariffs being his favourite word in the language. And then he said months ago, if the Supreme Court overturned this, we're screwed. I mean, he recognised that his government, America, whatever he thinks of as we, would be screwed.

16:22And I don't think you can underestimate what a body blow this will be now to Trump's power and authority that countries around the world are looking in and going, oh, the madman's rambling. now. He's just off on one. He's talking about 10 % today. He's off on 15 % tomorrow. It makes no sense. Let's just calm down. Let's not do deals. Let's not rush towards this because there's no stability. There's no coherence. And there's frankly, no authority. So I think that this is now becoming something where for nine months, the first nine months of the Trump presidency, second term, it was a pretty slick operation in terms of the executive orders that were well drafted and written and executed and you could see that Donald Trump was going at an incredible speed and tearing up an awful lot of kind of establishment America in the process but now he didn't want the Epstein files released and bang Congress said screw you we are listening to the American public they want them released we demand it and we are passing the legislation and Donald Trump has been forced to sign that law.

17:31We have seen what happened with NATO over Greenland where they said no you cannot do this to an ally and Donald Trump has backed down. We have now seen the Supreme Court weigh in and rule against his keynote the backbone of his economic policy as you rightly say and you suddenly think that here we are ahead of the midterms in November and Donald Trump's authority is looking a lot more shaky and that will embolden not only his opponents in america not only in corporate america which has been utterly supine until now but around the world where prime ministers like kirstama and others might suddenly start thinking actually he's not as frightening as we think he is he is constrained by the restraints of you know the three co-equal branches of government it's time for us to stand up to and that would be the really big significant takeout of what happened last Friday.

18:26That doesn't even take us to Minnesota, to ICE, to all the response and all the reaction against his really draconian immigration policy that was going on in the first few months of this year as well, where people again just said, don't do this in our name. Don't go around shooting. And all the ICE officers have pulled out. They've all gone. Yeah. And tomorrow we have the State of the Union address. and this is normally a moment of, I'd call it the victory lap, right? You stand up, you have both Houses of Congress and you tell everyone what you've achieved. Well, that's going to be interesting, watch.

19:04Well, the other thing, just in terms of the sort of theatrics of the State of the Union and the orchestration of it, the Supreme Court justices sit in the front row. So Donald Trump is going to be in there. You'd want to have your stab vest on, wouldn't you? Exactly. Wear Kevlar, take a flak helmet, you know, take your flak jacket and everything. Because those Supreme Court justices who voted down his keynote economic policy, they are going to be in Donald Trump's crosshairs. In a moment, we'll be asking why Australia seems ahead of the UK Parliament and what it's decided about Andrew.

20:06Thank you. LBC app. LBC leading Britain's conversation. And now another appliance triumph from your friends at Grand Appliance. Meet Jan. Her fridge died days before a dinner party, but she didn't panic. I just called my guy at Grand Appliance. He recommended a large capacity GE profile option with fingerprint resistant stainless steel and a convertible middle drawer. I can optimize for meat, beverages, snacks or wine. Best of all, it was in stock and they delivered next day. Another crisis averted by Grand Appliance. Shop GrandAppliance.com to learn more.

20:48The News Agents. So we woke to the news this morning that Australia, its government, has confirmed it will support any proposal to remove Andrew Mountbatten Windsor from the royal line of succession. This follows the arrest last week and it comes, it leapfrogs essentially any decision, any clarity that our government has made here. I suppose it's possible that it was helpful to the UK government to have Albanese kind of as an outrider saying, look, we support this. We're on your side. Of course, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor has brought shame on the royal family. He has to be removed from the line of succession.

21:31and that just kind of makes it easier for the British government to do it. But I think it's a sign as well. Let's look at it from the other end of the telescope. Can you imagine any Commonwealth country is going to say, oh, no, come on, Andrew should remain seventh in line to the throne. It just seems to me now that it's such a total no-brainer that it's kind of, why hasn't it happened already in a way? Well, I suppose the interesting thing is, and maybe we should just go back a step, for everyone who is joining the clamour to remove him, to have him removed from this place, eighth in line to the throne.

22:07One of the reasons that the government's been given for sort of dragging its feet is that it's not that simple. In other words, Keir Starmer can say it's not just us, it's not just my government. We have to get sign-off with 14 Commonwealth countries where King Charles III is the head of state. That includes Australia, that includes Canada, that includes New Zealand. I think the UK government has made it sound like, well, it's not just us, it's all of them. You know, and are we really going to get 14 other governments to do that? And you have to get everyone in line before we can do that. If they're ahead of us, I think it starts to get really uncomfortable for the government here.

22:44Or, as you say, makes it easier. I don't know. I mean, Albanese, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, wrote to Keir Starmer. Basically, what he said is in the light of recent events, I'm writing to confirm my government would agree to any proposal to remove him from the line of royal succession. I think confirm is interesting because it suggests that the question has sort of been raised and shut in one sentence. It's almost like an obviously we would. Obviously, we will join you if you do that. And so now it's kind of on Keir Starmer's plate to say, well, are we going to open this up or is this a kind of a red herring that takes us away from police inquiry, away from the question of justice into some arcane constitutional matter that may never come to pass?

23:31Sure. I mean, look, there's a degree of walking and chewing gum. This is the British government. It surely is capable of doing all those other things and seeing that justice is served and police investigations are followed at the same time as doing something about what seems an egregious anomaly that constitutionally he's still the eighth in line to the throne. I think what's interesting is that Australia is, you know, what we're saying by raising this is that Australia is ahead of Britain on this. And I think Australia is ahead of Britain in its attitudes towards the royal family. Look, there's a much more Republican streak in Australia.

24:08Go to Australia. What is it? What's the numbers? For example, when the Queen died and they're printing new banknotes, they said the five dollar Australian banknote will not have a picture of the king on it. It will just be neutral. We are still part of the Commonwealth, but we don't need to have the king on our banknotes. Do they have the king on any of the money? I think on other ones they will do, but they chose that on the five dollar bill. Listen to me, I'm shocked. I know. But that I think is because you look at the makeup of the Australian population. And of course, huge numbers of people have come from Britain, but huge numbers have come from Asia.

24:48And there's a very strong Asian influence, Italian influence, Greek influence who know nothing about our royal family. And so I think that Australia is changing. But I think that is going to change here. There's an older generation of white Australians who are very much royalists still. but among a younger generation I think that is changing profoundly and I wouldn't be surprised if you were to do attitudinal surveys in this country you would find exactly the same thing that among a younger generation there are people saying what's the royal family for now I don't get it I don't see why I don't see what this great thing is particularly when we've learned about the antics of this bloke Andrew Mountbatten Windsor.

25:28So I guess what we are discussing here or what we're on the cusp of discussing is whether you can, to misquote Badger again, let the sunlight in, destroy the magic and keep the royal family. There are many more calls this month for transparency than there were even a month ago. Accountability. I mean, I was thinking over the weekend about that payment that we think the Queen made to Virginia Giffray. It did not imply liability. It was a civic case. But at the time, do you remember, we were we were sort of scrabbling around going, oh, it's 12 million dollars. Oh, no, it might not be 12 million.

26:09It might be only 8 million or it might be only 3 million. And the idea that we were getting the number wrong for the simple reason that no one told us anything. Yeah. And it is kind of extraordinary that, you know, journalists have been in this position really all their lives or all this century and the ones before of not ever really getting facts confirmed because we were never really allowed to ask the questions. And so somebody might say, oh, don't be ridiculous. It's preposterous. Of course, it wasn't 12 million. Well, how do we know? Of course it wasn't public money. Well, how do we know?

26:48I remember at the time the Treasury said no public money had been used. Boris Johnson would not confirm whether it would be. He was the prime minister in 2022. He would not confirm whether it would have been OK for public money to be used because politicians didn't comment on royal matters. and the truth is I think there's a real elision now of us not really knowing what royal money is what public money is if the queen has a gold piano are we okay with that because she's the queen you know if you don't like the gold piano you won't like the castle you won't like the palace she's the queen she has a gold piano but if it's a payout to a victim of sexual abuse whose money is that I don't think it was Andrew's was it the Queen's did she ask questions of her favourite son did she not dare ask was it her money and if it's her money is that not really our money so I think I mentioned on the podcast last week that on our family whatsapp group Anna my daughter said to me was that public money or was it the Queen's money I said well it depends on your attitude of what is her money and what is our money and I think that it's just ridiculous us that we can't know this stuff.

28:00And I know it's petty and I don't want to make it sound like we're piling in on Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. But the idea that British taxpayers should be on the hook for him having massages when he's travelling around the world as our trade envoy. Of course, that shouldn't be paid out of taxpayers' money. And yet it seems that, you know, a civil servant objected and he was told, oh, no, we'll just pay it. The trouble is, as soon as you ask one question, you're asking all of them. OK, so, you know, he can't have massages on the taxpayer, but can he have champagne and peanuts as he sits on the flight, right?