The appeals court decision is a win, but we’re still a far way from resolving policy uncertainty:
Figure 1: EPU-trade category (blue, left scale), and Trade Policy Uncertainty index (red, right scale). Source: Baker, Bloom & Davis policyuncertainty.com, and Caldara et al. TPUD.
Cantor Fitzgerald is selling hedges on whether the Supreme Court will strike down the tariffs. They pay a 20% discount to importers on their tariff bills and get the full eventual tariff refund, if it occurs. The importer get some desperately needed cash right now and the investor get a 5-fold payoff in a year or two if the court decides in their favor.
Note that Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, one of Trump’s most vicious tariff attack dogs, was CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald up until his Commerce confirmation in February and installed his two sons as co-chairmen as replacements. With these guys its always heads I win, tails you lose, no matter how it goes.
Economist and convicted felon Peter Navarro calls Lisa Cook “a DEI hire” and an “animal”.
Yikes!
He also claims that she was a partisan hack who voted to keep rates low, causing the inflation spike. The truth is that LIsa Cook’s first vote at the Fed was in June 2022, when she voted for a .75 point hike and a total of 3.75 more after that. Navarro is just a bald faced liar.