(The Economic Collapse Blog)—How are businesses supposed to plan for the future if they have no idea what the rules of the game are going to be? Businesses thrive in a predictable environment, but we have entered a period of time of extreme uncertainty. One day we are facing high tariffs, the next day one court strikes them all down, and then the next day another court temporarily reverses that decision. How is anyone supposed to make solid business decisions in such an environment?
Our economy has been heading in the wrong direction for a long time, and we need to take bold action to fix things. But if legal battles are going to be constantly upending the rules of the game, there is no way that we are going to be able to pull out of our economic death spiral.
On Wednesday, three judges at the U.S. Court of International Trade made headlines all over the world when they dramatically struck down all of President Trump’s tariffs…
A federal court on Wednesday ruled that President Donald Trump overstepped his authority to impose sweeping tariffs that have raised the cost of imports for everyone from giant businesses to everyday Americans.
But the administration immediately appealed the decision on Wednesday night, leaving the situation uncertain for consumers and companies and potentially prolonging the battle over whether Trump’s import duties will stand – and possibly reshape the global economy.
A three-judge panel at the US Court of International Trade, a relatively low-profile court in Manhattan, stopped Trump’s global tariffs that he imposed citing emergency economic powers, including the “Liberation Day” tariffs he announced on April 2. It also prevents Trump from enforcing his tariffs placed earlier this year against China, Mexico and Canada, designed to combat fentanyl coming into the United States.
Many news outlets on the left were in a celebratory mood once this decision was announced.
For example, the following comes from Politico…
The U.S. Court of International Trade’s unanimous ruling against Trump’s signature tariffs is not the first judicial rebuke of Trump’s second term administration — and it will not be the last — but it may be the most serious and consequential to date. For the time being, the decision provides a major source of relief to the large majority of Americans who opposed Trump’s tariffs; to the U.S. businesses, both large and small, whose operations were existentially threatened by a policy that changed by the day; to the country’s foreign trading partners, whose economies were thrown into disarray; and to international financial markets, which quickly rose after the decision came down.
And the Chinese were quite thrilled by the decision as well…
China reiterated its call for the U.S. to abolish its tariffs after a panel of federal judges ruled that President Donald Trump did not have the authority to introduce them under the emergency powers he had used. The Trump administration is appealing the decision.
He Yongqian, spokesperson for the Chinese Commerce Ministry, said Beijing has “noticed that the court ruled that tariffs imposed over [the] fentanyl issue and Trump administration’s worldwide reciprocal tariffs are illegal and blocked them from going into effect.”
“China has always maintained that there are no winners in a trade war and that protectionism has no way out,” He said, according to state media outlet Global Times.
But the truth is that this court decision really didn’t change much at all.
Economists at Goldman Sachs quickly pointed out that the Trump administration has other ways to impose tariffs and that this ruling “might not change the final outcome for most major US trading partners”…
Goldman Sachs economists said the White House has a few tools at its disposal that could ensure the court ruling is only a temporary problem.
“This ruling represents a setback for the administration’s tariff plans and increases uncertainty but might not change the final outcome for most major US trading partners,” Goldman Sachs economists said in a research note.
“For now, we expect the Trump administration will find other ways to impose tariffs,” they added.
In particular, the Trump administration could use “Section 122 of U.S. trade law, Section 301 investigations and Section 338 of the Trade Act of 1930” to impose new tariffs in place of the tariffs that were struck down…
The Trump administration nevertheless has other legal means of imposing tariffs, Goldman says, flagging Section 122 of U.S. trade law, Section 301 investigations and Section 338 of the Trade Act of 1930.
Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 does not require a formal investigation and could therefore be one of the swiftest ways to get around the court roadblock.
“The administration could quickly replace the 10% across-the-board tariff with a similar tariff of up to 15% under Sec. 122,” analysts at Goldman said.
But for now, none of that will be necessary, because the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has temporarily stopped the decision by the US Court of International Trade from taking effect…
A federal appeals court on Thursday granted the Trump administration’s request to temporarily pause a lower-court ruling that struck down most of President Donald Trump’s tariffs.
The Trump administration had earlier told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit that it would seek “emergency relief” from the Supreme Court as soon as Friday if the tariff ruling was not quickly put on pause.
The judgment issued Wednesday night by the U.S. Court of International Trade is “temporarily stayed until further notice while this court considers the motions papers,” the appeals court said in its order.
What a mess.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt is insisting that this is a matter that will ultimately need to be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court…
- “There is a troubling and dangerous trend of unelected judges inserting themselves into the presidential decision making process,” she said. “America cannot function if President Trump, or any other president for that matter, has their sensitive diplomatic or trade negotiations railroaded by activist judges.”
- She added, “But ultimately, the Supreme Court must put an end to this for the sake of our Constitution.”
She is right.
The Supreme Court will need to get involved.
But how long will that take?
And at this stage, it is very unclear what the Supreme Court will choose to do…
“At the moment, it is anyone’s guess as to whether these very unpopular tariffs will be reinstated on appeal or by the Supreme Court,” said Carl Weinberg, chief economist at High Frequency Economics, in a May 29 research note. “So, uncertainty is now poised to escalate.”
It could take weeks or even months before a final decision is reached.
So what are U.S. businesses supposed to do during that time?
I have heard from a number of U.S. business owners that are experiencing quite a bit of stress right now.
Sadly, the numbers show that the U.S. economy had shifted into contraction mode even before the global trade war erupted…
According to the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), the advanced GDP Growth Rate is expected to have contracted by 0.2% in the January-March period. The readings show a marked pullback from the prior quarter’s 2.4% expansion.
The drama that has played out right in front of our eyes this week is yet another example of how broken our system has become.
In the months ahead, there will be many more matters that directly affect our economy that will end up in the courts, and unelected judges will get to decide what happens.
It is not good for our society to have endless battles between the executive branch and the judicial branch.
Meanwhile, Congress is so paralyzed that it literally can’t seem to get much of anything done.
If you are trying to run a business in the midst of this madness, you definitely have my sympathy, and I have a feeling that a lot more uncertainty is ahead of us.
Michael’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.
Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.
