The Supreme Court is not releasing a ruling on President Trump's tariffs today as the court still weighs the legality of the duties. Here to discuss this and much more is Eurasia Group founder and president Ian Bremmer. And Ian, I know this week you were also out with your top risks for this year. We're going to get to that in a moment, but I had to ask you about this first. Um, you know, what do you make? We were all sort of waiting for it to happen today, this ruling potentially to be handed down. Looks like we're going to have to wait a little bit longer, but how should we be thinking about what the Supreme Court may say considering the administration seems well prepared for it?
Well, it is likely to be one of many constraints on Trump's ability to continue to use tariffs as his principal tool to project American power around the world. Another is the fact that the Chinese in particular have shown that they're prepared to hit the Americans back hard, and therefore Trump is tilting more towards trying to get to a deal, to get to yes with Xi, as opposed to forcing him to capitulate. You've got affordability issues driving political discontent with President Trump now, as opposed to being one of the top positives when he first became president for his second term a year ago. And the likely eventual ruling from the Supreme Court to constrain, at least in part, President Trump's tariff-making capacity using AIPA to determine national emergency. You can't really — no jurist would make that sweeping claim in the way that Trump asked forgiveness, not permission, did originally. And so all of these things imply the US is going to have more constraints on those activities going forward.
You know, it's interesting, and I had a discussion with some market participants earlier who said, you know, that even if some of the tariffs are removed, that the market's kind of priced it in already and adjusted. But on a company-by-company level, if there is more volatility to come on their operations, one would think that would have to, you know, cause some hiccups at least on that front.
Certainly, uncertainty is the biggest problem. They'd rather a lousy but stable operating environment than one that is all over the map that they continually have to reassess and re-plan. But here we're talking — if it turns out, again, as we expect, that there will be constraints, it's very clear what the alternative tools would be for President Trump to impose tariffs: Section 232, others. And that, I think, limits the scale of uncertainty going forward, even though the initial reaction to the Supreme Court ruling will require big readjustments.
And all of this, of course, speaks to the risks that you just outlined this week in your annual list of top risks on a geopolitical basis. The number one risk is US political revolution, what you said you referred to last year as the rule of dawn. People are now throwing around the term Monroe Doctrine in the wake of Venezuela. And what's interesting is how curiously unaffected, since Liberation Day, largely the markets have been by all of this. What would change that, Ian?
These are long-term concerns for the markets, not short-term concerns. You know, the fact is we have lots of conflict, for example, in areas that produce oil, but demand is relatively soft and OPEC has about 2 million barrels off the market right now. So, I mean, it's fairly obvious that the bigger concerns are the United States saying, we're going to change the political system internally and we're going to change the foreign policy operating principles externally. That President Trump said the only constraint on his action is his personal morality. I suspect a lot of allies of the United States do not see that as a significant constraint. Those things are going to have very big long-term impacts on not only how the world is ordered, but how capital moves, how supply chains are formed. And definitely, if you are a big multinational corporation investing for five, for 10 years and longer — a time frame which is considerably longer than Trump is going to be president — these things are massively uncertain and they are affecting your decisions. But we shouldn't expect that to have an impact on short-term investments in the markets.
Yes, and we've talked about this theme before, certainly as well. You know, I am curious, as we see this remaking, what does it say about the soundness of the US democracy at this point? Because of some of the changes that President Trump has made, from influence on the media in some cases to public ownership of individual companies, for example, as well. So what does it mean about the character of our democracy?
The politicization of the Department of Justice and the FBI to be loyal to him as opposed to independently carrying out the rule of law — these all show that both norms and actual checks and balances that are codified in institutions on the president are weaker than they used to be. And Trump is a symptom of that, but he is also an accelerant of that process. That's what the political revolution is. So we know it's underway. And in many ways, we compared Trump to FDR, the other major revolutionary president in history. And in many ways, in Trump's first year, he's showing he's much more willing and capable to break these norms and checks and balances than FDR was over his three terms. So that's quite something. But ultimately, we do think that President Trump is likely to fail. Our confidence level is less strong than you would like it to be, but for three reasons in ascending order of importance. First, because Trump is less popular than he was a year ago and he's likely to lose the House in the midterms, and that is likely to have at least some impact on Republicans thinking he's a lame duck and starting to break away from him. We haven't seen that yet, but it is more likely over time. More importantly, there still are checks and balances on the president. You already asked about the Supreme Court, but we've seen court rulings, for example, stop Trump from his investigations that are politicized into Comey and Letitia James, prevent him from sending the National Guard to Chicago, for example. You still have a professionalized military that reports ultimately to the Constitution. And you also have, you know, a federal system of governors and states that run a lot of things in policy, including elections, and that matters. But the most important reason why the political revolution is likely to fail is because Trump is undisciplined. Because even though he says that the Democrats are his principal enemy and the adversary of the United States, and not the Russians and not the Venezuelans and not the Iranians, he is easily distracted. He is very impulsive and he doesn't have a lot of policy expertise. So he's very willing to faff around in Greenland, where a disciplined president that wanted a political revolution, that believed that Biden had actually weaponized the system against him and was a mortal threat, would be spending all of his time and influence and power on destroying that other party and making sure that they have no chance to effectively run for leadership again. They'd be focused on shutting down the fundraising and shutting down the media and all of the things that one does if one wants to actually take control of the reins of the state. And Trump has really shown that even though he has that impulse, it competes with many other impulses. And so ultimately, as they say, sometimes it's better to be lucky than smart. And I do think that the United States falls increasingly in that category.
Ian, we could talk about that for the rest of the hour alone, but I do want to move to one of the other risks that you talk about, and it's the US versus China. Not necessarily on the tech front, which is what a lot of people talk about, but on the energy to power the tech front, which I thought was really interesting. You paint the US as a sort of petro state at this point, and certainly the Trump administration has leaned more into that, and China more depending on alternative sources of energy. I was struck this morning by Meta's announcement that it is partnering with a number of nuclear companies to buy power from them. So, how do you see this playing out? Because it's obviously not clear, you know, we're not just relying on petrol here in the US, petroleum here in the US. They're not just relying on alternative sources in China. So, how does that all play out?
