and it's been a hectic 24 hours for businesses and investors who are dealing with tariff whiplash and what it means for their bottom line late Wednesday a federal court threw out a major piece of President Trump's trade policy by blocking his broad use of tariffs under emergency powers it was a blanket 10% levy on most imported goods with steeper rates for some select countries well then just hours later an appeals court reversed the decision letting the tariffs continue for now adding to growing economic uncertainty both here in the US and globally for the latest on the ruling and when consumers might start to feel the effects I'm joined by Peru Jane a finance and economic professor at Ruter's business school as part of our spotlight on business report tonight peril good to talk to you um it goes without saying there have been a lot of changes with the tariff policies which one specifically does this affect are they all in play at this point i think they're all in play at this point uh particularly since agreements have only been with respect to two countries and I don't think that's also going to stick so consequently yes everything is in play and you know we're getting all these different rulings from the US Court of International Trade which was then there was an a stay that was put on it so the markets were very happy yesterday financial markets but then again you know there was a reversal uh in that policy you know the stay and so we still have so much uncertainty dealing with you know what is going to really happen yeah it's interesting that you mentioned the markets because they're looking to post a really good month overall for May yet you talk to consumers you talk to investors and and businesses specifically and it's a little bit of a different picture there how are businesses preparing to deal with this i mean this will cause disruptions um regardless of the legal rulings right because they're on they're off they're back on again yes indeed and in fact you know if you look at the data uh businesses tried to be a little bit preemptive consumers also were trying to be preemptive in terms of accelerating their purchases prior to the uh imposition of these tariffs so they did stockpile you know some uh decent amounts but at the same time you know how long can this go on and so a lot of firms from what I have read are trying you know they're not engaging in investments at the present time they don't want to increase their hiring they don't want to get committed into producing more when they're not certain about what their sales are going to be looking like down the line what about supply chains um I know we're not even in June yet but a lot of folks have to start making plans for the holidays um and to get those orders in for those items that do come in um from out of the country what is that looking like that is looking very very uncertain as well so as we know supply chains are very intricately linked around the globe and so a lot of intermediate inputs that are needed for some production processes that's going to be uh you know if you're facing higher and higher tariffs you know and it kind of varies all over the place and this kind of an uncertain environment is causing firms to sort of clamp down and reduce like I said they they're hiring in fact a couple of students you know they're getting their job offers rescended as well and so it's uh you know uh for forecasters in general and you know uh this is a very uncertain time period for um you know trying to look into our uh forecasting models and come up with a number that we think is going to stick but on balance I think you know what we're all looking at and we've seen it we've seen it all over the place and that is that inflation is going to ratchet up economic growth is going to suffer and as a matter of fact you know confidence in the US economy has diminished to a point that consumers do not wish to commit too far down the line especially if they're not certain about their job prospects what about the confidence then in terms of the US being a global leader and our position um within other world leaders uh who have been looking to make deals with the US to potentially uh lower the tariffs that they would see uh all the back and forth I imagine that that affects the US's ability to negotiate on on certain items right so that's why we're saying that this is such an uncertain environment that you know we had the ruling from the US court of international trade which which was uh you know very optim raised a lot of optimism that tariff rates would in fact be limited but uh as a matter of fact you know when when we're looking at all of this uh vacasillation back and forth back and forth that you know we and threatening different actions uh it's just simply going to be uh a little bit of you know quite a bit of a downward pull on the economy so although some of the numbers that we've been getting on inflation etc have improved this is the expectation is that you know US inflation could ratchet up to four uh between four and 5% US economic growth is going to suffer greatly and the recession odds among consumer groups among forecasters are that you know there's a 60% chance that the United States could slip into a recession so with respect to your earlier question you know about the global positioning of the United States yes this is not a good sign for us and um uh you know and other countries stand to gain from the US loss uh losses such as China and other countries in Europe and also in Asia though of course this is not the final say we will hear back from the appeals court in about a week of course it could then get kicked to the Supreme Court uh Professor Peru Jane with Ruters Business School thanks so much for your insight thank you very much support for the business report is provided by Riverview Jazz presenting the 12th annual Jersey City Jazz Festival May 27th to the 31st event details including performance 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