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This is the Blueberg Day ba Q podcast. Good morning, It's Friday, the ninth of January. I'm Caroline Hepkat in London and.
I'm Stephen Caroline Brussels. Coming up today, the US Supreme Court could decide as soon as today if Trump's sweeping global tariffs are illegal.
Iran cntsaw phone and internet access as demonstrations across the country grow.
Plus why starting a blog is the new Silicon Valley trend.
Let's start with the roundup of our top stories.
The US Supreme Court could rule as soon as today on the legality of President Trump's sweeping tariffs rolled out in April of last year. America's top court has scheduled this Friday as an opinion day when it issues decisions, and cases already argued. A ruling against Trump would leave the US government on the hook for tens of billions of dollars in tariff free funds. The levies and question of so far generation had roughly one hundred and fifty
billion dollars for the US Treasury. Zoe Tillman is Bloomberg's senior legal reporter in Washington.
Back in April, there were a handful of lawsuits filed saying that the President simply doesn't have the authority to rely on a nineteen seventy seven Emergency Powers law to order these kinds of tariffs, and lower courts repeatedly agreed with the challengers said he doesn't have authority to do this.
The case made its way to the Supreme Court, and in the weeks after the court heard arguments on November fifth, we've seen this onslaught of activity in court as companies have come in with their own lawsuits saying we agree, we don't think it's lawful, and if the Supreme Court strikes this down, we want our money back.
Zoe Tillman, speaking there. The Trump administration has signaled that if the Supreme Court rules the tariffs are illegal, it intends to reimpose most, if not all, of them, under different legal provisions.
Internet and phone services in a row and have been cut off after protests ramped up overnight in the country. Unverified social media videos show thousands taking to the streets in the capital Tehran. The unrest started on the twenty eighth of December in Tehran's Grand Bazaar, to sudden decline in the value of Iran's currency and is emerging as a challenge to the authority of Supreme Leader Iotola Ali Homne.
The US President Donald Trump says he has warned Iran's regime not to resort to violence.
I have put Arano noticed that if they start shooting at him. These people are totally unarmed people, and they love their country. They want something to happen. Look at their country. They've gone, They've gone back one hundred and fifty years. But I've fold them that if they do anything bad to these people, We're going.
To hit them very hard.
Despite President Chump's comments to Fox News, the Human Rights News Agency estimates the state crackdown has already killed forty two people.
The US is considering paying Greenland's residence up to one hundred thousand dollars each. That's according to Reuter's, which sites sources saying the payments would be intended to convince Greenland to split from Denmark. Speaking to Fox News yesterday, US Vice President JD Vance said Trump's warnings about the territory should be heeded.
The President of the United States is saying very clearly, you are not doing a good job with respect to Greenland. We're going to make sure we defend America's interest and I think the President's willing to go as far as he has to to make sure he does that.
Yes, Vice President jd. Vance there was speaking after Francis Emmanuel Macron criticized recent US actions during his annual speech to French ambassadors yesterday.
That's the big risk of the international order that we live under. The US as an established power, but one that's gradually turning away from certain allies and moving away from international rules promoted just recently, whether that's with regards to trade and certain elements of security we.
Do as a Macron, speaking there at the Lisa's Conference of Ambassadors, where he also highlighted what he called a growing temptation to divide the world amongst great powers.
Now onto copp News, Rio Tinto is in talks to buy rival glen Core. A tie up would create the world's biggest mining company, with a market value of more than two hundred billion dollars. The new negotiations come a little over a year after previous talks between the two firms collapsed. Clara Ferrera Marquez is Bloomberg's Managing editor for Commodities and energy in Asia.
They were talking back in twenty twenty four. At that point it was glen Core making a move for Reo. It looks like this time it might be the reverse. They're a very obvious combination. Rio has been interested in iron ore and glen Core has a lot better coper assets really than Rea does.
That was Clara Ferra Marquez speaking there, as demand for copper has never been stronger than metal. Sword to record highs above thirteen thousand dollars a ton earlier this week.
China's inflation is accelerating at the fastest pace in nearly three years, as higher food price as hide deeper concerns. December's CPI reading showed prices up zero point eight percent compared to the previous year, in line with estimates. The increase in food prices drove the rise, but the rest of China's economy has been plagued by weak consumption and price wars. Producer prices fell by two point one percent in the same period, for the thirty ninth straight month of declines.
Now to the UK, where there's been a surge in the number of people at risk of losing their jobs. That's according to New figures, which will likely set off alarm bells at the Bank of England. To Bloomberg Tea at a BAIO has more.
More British workers face losing their job now than at any point in almost three years. That's according to fresh data from the government's Insolvency Service about the number of potential redundancies, which are at their second highest level since the pandemic. It's a spike that's especially concerning given job losses typically slow over the festive period. Now the pressure is on policy makers at the Bank of England to continue lowering interest rates this year as the labor market shakeout.
Intense advice in London, Ty had a Bayo Bloomberg Radio.
And those are our top stories for you this morning. Looking at the markets, equities are trading within a really narrow range because there are two big risk events that we've just mentioned, the US payrolls report and this possible Supreme Court ruling on President Trump's tariffs. The Japanese yen above the one hundred and fifty seven level. The Swiss franc is also ticking lower, and it looks like the
dollars in line for the best week since November. Oil prices extending gains, so investors clearly a monitoring what's going on in Venezuela and Iran. Break Crew futures up by eight tenths of one percent, six two dollars forty seven stop futures for the USOX swifty futures also gaining four tenths of one percent. Those are the markets.
Well In a moment, more on what could be that huge day for Ronald Trump's trade tariffs, Plus we'll hear from Michelle Hassein's interview with Trump's trade advisor Peter Navarro. Another story that we've been reading this morning on why even the most high tech executives are going low tech. Bloomberg depinion columnist Dave Lee has been writing about a subject that plunges me certainly, right back to the middle of the two thousands, blogging the simpler time on the Internet.
At the end of December, the Microsoft CEO sauch And Nadalla started his personal blog called sn Scratchpad, and Dave actually writes that it's the format rather than the content that's most interesting about it. It's very minimal style, uses a simple template, nobells or whistles. Nadella's name doesn't even appear on the site, although there are two links to
his social media profiles. Why this approach, Dave says maybe it's a new cliche in the tech world, allowing the sectors visionaries to opine freely without a filter, although he does point out the blog was read by two senior Microsoft figures before being published.
Okay, I think this is really interesting. I mean, look, on the downside, asking me to read your blog feels a bit like having to do my HMRC tax forms. But on the other hand, at least that it shows that maybe ideas matter, maybe they are back in vogue. Human content and thought perhaps are actually valuable to someone out there. That gives me some hope.
I'm quite nostalgic about that moment when the blogger sphere was a big thing on the Internet, you know, before we all started screaming at each other on social media. I think this could be a very interesting idea of people moving more back to it. Of course, we've had the substack phenomenon as well, which has attracted popstars Choice Ivan among them, most recently joining the fact of being able to try and publish those direct masters to people.
So perhaps another shift in the fabric of the Internet. You can read Day's full piece a Bloomberg dot com slash opinion.
Let's bringing more now on the expected decision today from the US Supreme Court on whether President Trump exceeded his powers in imposing his blanket tariffs last April. Our trades are Brendan Murray joins us now for more on this. Brendan good to speak to what exactly, then, is the court looking at.
So, the Court is looking specifically at the authority that the President used to impose tariffs under this so called International Emergency Economic Powers Act. The short term for it is AEPA, and this is an acronym that applies to about three quarters of the tariffs that President Trump has collected so far in his second term, amounting to about one hundred and fifty billion dollars of a total of two hundred billions. So there's quite a lot at stake
here today. We don't know exactly whether the Supreme Court is going to rule today. We just know they're going to start reading some opinions around ten am Washington time. And because this tariff case has been expedited, we do expect it to be among the first of these opinions to be addressed this year, so, but it could spill into next week as well. But we are on high alert for anything the court might say about ruling either for or against the centerpiece of President Trump's economic policies.
So, if the court does decide that these the imposing of these tariffs was illegal, what would it mean for the tariffs that happened in force up at the now.
Well, it would mean he would have to come up with other ways to collect revenue and impose tariffs. And he has at least a handful of other legal ways to do that, and they could do it pretty quickly. The administration could impose a fifteen percent across the board tariff on countries using a different authority under its code in the law, under the number one twenty two we've heard about two thirty two's. Those are authorities he can use already he has on steel and aluminum and autos.
There's another authority with another number of the three to zero ones, and those could also come and we expect that the administration would move pretty quickly to essentially replicate the tariffs that are out there under this other authority that's being challenged with these new authorities, So tariffs aren't going away. They just might be coming back around if there will court rules against President Trump under these different authorities that he has, So a lot.
Of people wondering, then what about the money that has already been paid under these tariffs? What would happen?
Yeah, that's going to be the big question. You know, one hundred and fifty billion dollars is a lot of money. When you're talking about the amount of refunds that companies could seek if these tariffs are ruled illegal, it's going to be a messy situation. There are thousands and thousands of companies that would want to apply for these refunds.
They essentially have to petition the government for these and the Customs Agency recently said that they're going to go to all electronic refunds starting in early February, so that could help expedite the process. But it's going to be an administrative nightmare really to try to return the funds back to back to the companies that paid them. Remember, many of them would have said to their foreign suppliers, hey,
can you give me a discount. Many of them would have passed some of these cost increases along to consumers, and so it gets really kind of It gets really kind of complicated to see who actually paid for these tariffs. But the bottom line is the importer of record is the one that paid for them, and they're going to want their money back from Uncle Sam if the Supreme Court rules against Trump today.
Okay, Brandon Murray, our trades are thank you very much.
Us.
More from Bloomberg Daybreak Europe coming up after this.
Now, US President Donald Trump's tough talk about China and tariffs can be traced back, in large part to the economist Peter Navarro. He's a well known China corehawk. He's written books arguing that Beijing poses a threat to the US economy and its national security. Now, on this week's The Michelle Hussein Show, Navarro talks about US China relations and the upcoming Supreme Court ruling that could unravel many of President Trump's tariffs.
Let's start with the case itself.
The case is about whether you can use the emergency powers of the president to impose terror and it was.
Your advice that he could. You you were clear that this was the way the IEEPA, this was the act.
If the Supreme Court wants to essentially ratify the president's use of terrorists under AIPA. The law is on its side and our side, and the law is simply this. There's two salient points for your viewers.
One is the.
Question of whether a tariff is a tax, and in this context, in an emergency context, it's absolutely not.
Teriffs. Tax revenues are incidental.
Now. The other, the other issue is a language issue, is whether teriffs are legitimate form of import restriction, and of course they are. So the Supreme Court has has the ability now with respect to Plan B. Whatever Plan B is will not be as good as Plan A. So we have to recognize that this will be because.
Doctor lots of companies will have to be compensated, won't they for m depends.
On what the discs. Let's not go there until we have to go there.
I mean, I'm very confident that we have a very very good chance. I mean, the laws on our side, the laws on our side here, So let's win that. Now, if we don't win, there's the whole alphabet number soup of things we've got. We've got the Section two thirty two's which we are using aggressively already on things like steel and aluminum, on lumber, on critical minerals on pharmaceuticals. We have that, we have the three oh one section which we used on China to impose tariffs, which we can do.
On any country in the world that's cheating us. It is wrong.
If this case goes against you, it will affect your standing, won't it in the White House? Because you are the one who was convinced that this route was the right one to go down with the bulk of tariff policy. Would you consider resigning if the case is lost?
Of course, that's silly, I mean, and why I just like, I'm part of a trade team. We've got Scott Bessett as the Treasury Secretary, Howard Latnik is the Commerce Secretary, Jamison Career as the United States Trade Representative, and myself with a JD. Vance weying in. And the only person who matters is President Trump. Okay, So we are proceeding as the vision of how to go about this was crafted not by me, but by a group of people.
We're doing exactly what we should be doing. We've anticipated contingencies, but we think that the most important thing to do now is focus on winning that case. As the Supreme Court, that's where we're at. If we lose, then we have a plan. B. It's not for me to talk about that to the world because I don't think we're going to.
Lose, but if we do, we are certainly prepared.
Imagine the refund bill, which Thomas saying could be as much as one hundred billion dollars.
I think you're basically making the case why what we've done is a very good thing.
I mean, think about it.
Did from the Democrats who spent money, as we say on this side of the pond, like drunken sailors. Okay, just totally fiscally irresponsibile, like crazy stuff. And we were looking when we got into office at a fiscal cliff that was going to crush us with higher interest rates, inability to fancy and and this tariff revenue, if you just cost it out, is the difference between a dangerous deficit and a healthy pay down in our debt.
We're coming towards towards the end of the conversation. And I quite often ask people what they do at the weekends, and I'm conscious, like, what are your weekends like work?
When you look, it's like when you're working for the White House, It's it's like being at sea or being on deployment for the military.
You're working every day.
And I know better than most because I remember the last day from the first term and it was like, you know, you're living in well.
There was some stuff we.
Left on the table we could have should have got done and we didn't. And I try to tell people who there, it's like, look, the clock's ticking and we got a lot.
Of work to do for the American people.
Spend as much time as you can without it influencing or harming your family time.
But this job is not a job. It's not a job. It's a mission. I mean, there's no I.
Mean it's like, if this were just a job, I wouldn't be doing it because I'm at the retirement age and I could just as easily be working on my next book or whatever.
This is Bloomberg Daybreak Europe, your morning brief on the stories making news from London to Wall Streets and beyond.
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