The Court ruled. The chaos continues. Are you ready?

The US Supreme Court just struck down most of President Trump's sweeping tariffs in a 6-3 decision, ruling that IEEPA, the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act, was never designed to give any president unilateral authority to reshape global trade. Chief Justice John Roberts was blunt: those two words, "regulate" and "importation," simply cannot bear the weight the administration placed on them.

Business owners exhaled. Markets shrugged. And Team Trump immediately began plotting its next move.

Here's what every Fortune 1,000 CEO needs to understand: this ruling is not a resolution. It is a reset—and the chaos that follows may prove more complex than what preceded it.

The ruling is clear. The road ahead is not.

The Court's decision lowered the effective tariff rate from roughly 12.8% to 8.3%. That sounds like relief, but the administration's trade representatives were signaling their workaround strategy before the ink dried. Sections 232, 301, 122, and 338 of existing trade law each offer the White House alternative pathways to reimpose duties—some targeted, some sweeping, and most considerably harder to challenge in Court.

Tariffs on steel, aluminum, automobiles, and Chinese imports under Section 301 remain intact. The administration's Section 301 investigation into China's Phase One compliance is still active. And USTR Jamieson Greer made clear he would begin constructing replacements "the next day" if the Court ruled against the White House. He has.

Meanwhile, America's trading partners are watching carefully. Canada, the EU, India, and others who negotiated deals under IEEPA now face an awkward question: Were those agreements built on legally sound authority? Most will hold, not because the legal foundation is firm, but because walking away risks a worse outcome with a White House eager to retaliate.

The refund question also looms large. Based on data through early 2026, the US has collected roughly $200 billion to over $280 billion in total tariff revenue since the start of Trump's second term and the "Liberation Day" actions in early 2025. The US Treasury Department reported a massive surge in customs duties following the imposition of new, broad tariffs. Justice Kavanaugh, in dissent, warned that any refund process would be an administrative "mess" with significant consequences for the US Treasury. For importers who absorbed rather than passed these costs, that potential windfall is real—but so is the litigation required to access it.

Today's ruling is not the end of the tariff volatility. It is the next act.

If previous Ross Rants have established one consistent theme, it is this: treat the geopolitical and policy environment as a permanent operating condition, not a passing storm. The US Supreme Court ruling does not return us to a pre-2025 trade regime. It introduces a new phase—one characterized by fragmented tariff authorities, accelerated congressional debates over trade power, and an administration committed to protectionist outcomes through every available legal channel.

For manufacturing firms reshaping North American supply chains, this means nearshoring decisions must now account for multiple tariff scenarios simultaneously. For technology companies navigating export controls and China competition, the legal volatility compounds existing strategic complexity. For energy companies exposed to Middle East and Arctic dynamics, and multinationals managing USMCA renegotiation uncertainty, the calculus has not simplified—it has multiplied.

Oxford Economics estimates that even with the ruling, sustained uncertainty "could ding, rather than derail" US GDP growth in 2026. Business Roundtable was measured in its response, encouraging the administration to "recalibrate its approach" and coordinate with allies on targeted trade enforcement. That is sensible counsel. The administration's track record on measured restraint, however, is limited.

The structural reality facing corporate America is that tariff volatility, supply chain disruption, elevated interest rates, and heightened government stakeholder engagement requirements are not temporary inconveniences. They are the operating environment. Capital allocation, competitive positioning, and boardroom preparedness must reflect this.

Your competitors who recognized this first are already operating with a geopolitical framework embedded in their strategic planning process. Those who treated these developments as a communications problem rather than a strategic one are now scrambling.

What must change in your boardroom?

First, scenario planning must assume sustained tariff instability through at least 2027. The administration has the tools, political will, and congressional allies to eventually secure statutory authority for expanded trade enforcement. The legal mechanism will change; the directional pressure will not.

Second, supply chain resilience is now a board-level competency, not a procurement function. The automotive sector's projected $7 billion in combined tariff-related losses for 2025 illustrates how quickly exposure compounds. Stress-testing supply chain architecture against multiple tariff regimes is no longer optional.

Third, government stakeholder engagement requires dedicated resources and ongoing intelligence. The gap between companies with sophisticated Washington and international engagement strategies and those without one is widening rapidly.

Fourth, refund eligibility deserves immediate legal review. If your organization paid IEEPA tariffs and did not pass those costs downstream, the recovery path may be shorter than the administration would prefer.

Tariff volatility. NATO credibility erosion. Supply chain disruption. Chinese competition. AI and tech sovereignty. Export control tightening. Interest rate uncertainty.

These are not background noise. These geopolitical issues are reshaping capital allocation, supply chain strategy, and competitive positioning right now. A Chief Geopolitical Officer doesn't wait for breaking news. They monitor signals daily, translate them into business implications, and prepare board members to decide—not scramble.

Most Fortune 1,000 companies and private equity portfolio companies don't have one.

Caracal Global is your fractional Chief Geopolitical Officer.

Led by a Michigan-born, DC-based global business advocate with experience in US and UK national political campaigns, US-China commercial relations, NATO affairs, and media engagement, Caracal Global is a communications firm that lives and breathes at the intersection of globalization, disruption, and politics. We provide intelligence, strategy, and communications services to senior executives, board members, and corporate affairs leaders who cannot afford to be reactive in an environment that rewards preparation.

Our clients include Fortune 1000 companies navigating tariff exposure, technology firms managing export controls and China competition, energy companies exposed to geopolitical volatility, and private equity portfolio companies where geopolitical risk directly affects exit multiples.

The Supreme Court ruled. The administration is already working around it.

The question for your organization is not whether the rules will change again; pro tip: they will.

The question is whether your organization is really positioned to thrive in this chaos and be better positioned than your competitors.

Enjoy the ride + plan accordingly.

-Marc

*****

Marc A. Ross is a geopolitical strategist and the founder of Caracal Global, a fractional Chief Geopolitical Officer service for Fortune 1000 companies and private equity firms. He publishes the Caracal Global Daily — what a Chief Geopolitical Officer monitors every morning. Subscribe at caracal.global/contact.

AOC's Munich stumble reveals a geopolitical knowledge gap in America's leaders

When Democrat New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) fumbles over her words, pauses blankly at the Munich Security Conference—one of the world's premier foreign-policy events—and won't commit the United States to defending Taiwan if China ever invades, the stumble reveals a geopolitical knowledge gap among America's leaders. Jim Geraghty in the Washington Post called the moment "strategic incomprehensibility."

"Um, you know, I think that this is such a, you know, I think that this is, this is of course a very longstanding policy of the United States," Ocasio-Cortez said as she struggled to answer the question from moderator Francine Lacqua of Bloomberg TV. "What we are hoping for is that we want to make sure that we never get to that point," she added.

Yikes.

AOC, long known for her communications, was instantly hurt by this stumble, and her presidential aspirations will suffer. Her answer to Lacqua revealed that it takes more than being a progressive princess to become the leader of the free world.

Executives in corner offices in Chicago, Houston, and Atlanta shouldn't be gleeful in AOC's stumble. They should draw a very different lesson from this uncomfortable moment: if one of America's most prominent politicians couldn't answer the Taiwan question clearly, what does that say about how prepared your company is for the scenario itself?

Munich was revealing precisely because it was supposed to be a showcase. AOC arrived as the brightest star of the American progressive movement, a potential 2028 presidential candidate testing her foreign policy credentials before an audience of world leaders. Instead, she struggled to articulate a coherent position on the most consequential geopolitical flashpoint of our era. Even sympathetic voices in her own party conceded the stumbles. What was a surefire presidential soft launch venue turned into a hard landing, aka a crash.

But here is the harder truth: most corporate leadership teams would fare no better if pressed on the same question in a board meeting.

The Taiwan Strait is not an abstraction.

Approximately $3 trillion in global trade passes through those waters annually. Taiwan produces the majority of the world's most advanced semiconductors. A Chinese military action against Taiwan, whether a blockade, a missile campaign, or an amphibious assault, would immediately disrupt supply chains, freeze financial markets, trigger emergency sanctions regimes, and force every multinational corporation with Asia-Pacific exposure to make decisions for which most have no playbook. The question AOC couldn't answer is one your risk committee should be rehearsing quarterly.

The conference was ostensibly about security, but the underlying current was geopolitical fragmentation at scale. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio worked to reassure jittery European allies about America's commitment to NATO. At the same time, AOC offered a class-based internationalist framework that left even friendly observers uncertain about its implications for policy. The result was a conference that produced more anxiety than clarity, a signal executives should internalize.

We are operating in a world where American foreign policy is being challenged by both foes and allies, where the traditional rules-based order is under strain from multiple directions simultaneously, and where the next administration, regardless of party, will inherit a geopolitical landscape fundamentally different from the one that existed a decade ago. The business environment your company navigated in 2019 is not returning.

What does this mean operationally?

It means the persistent volatility your procurement teams are managing around tariffs is not a negotiating tactic to be waited out. It is structural. Tit-for-tat trade measures between the United States and its major economic rivals have become a durable feature of the global commercial landscape rather than an anomaly. Supply chain strategies built around cost optimization in a stable geopolitical environment need to be rebuilt around resilience in an unstable one. Capital expenditure decisions that once turned primarily on interest rates now must account for jurisdictional risk, sanctions exposure, and the political durability of bilateral relationships.

The boardrooms that will navigate this era successfully are those that treat government relations and geopolitical intelligence not as communications overhead but as operational infrastructure. Companies need to know which legislators are driving trade policy, which regulatory bodies the Trump administration is weaponizing, and which alliances are under stress before those dynamics produce a crisis that forces a reactive response.

AOC's Munich moment was a preview of the debates that will define the next presidential cycle, and by extension, the policy environment your business will operate within through the end of the decade. Taiwan, NATO burden-sharing, sanctions architecture, export controls, and industrial policy are all live questions with direct revenue implications for multinational corporations.

Caracal Global serves as a fractional Chief Geopolitical Officer for Fortune 1,000 companies and private equity portfolio companies, providing intelligence, strategy, and communications at the intersection of globalization and American politics. Michigan-born and DC-based, Caracal's leadership brings experience in US-China commercial relations, NATO affairs, and national political campaigns on both sides of the Atlantic.

The Taiwan question isn't going away.

The executives who answer it strategically, before the crisis forces the issue, will be the ones still standing when it does.

-Marc

Marc A. Ross is a geopolitical strategist and the founder of Caracal Global, a fractional Chief Geopolitical Officer service for Fortune 1000 companies and private equity firms. He publishes the Caracal Global Daily — what a Chief Geopolitical Officer monitors every morning. Subscribe at caracal.global/contact.

Drop dead, Global Great Lakes: How petty grievances drive Team Trump's economic sabotage

Howard Lutnick, US Secretary of Commerce, met with Matthew Moroun on Monday. Moroun's family owns the Ambassador Bridge, the busiest US-Canada border crossing. For years, they have lobbied against a Canadian-led rival bridge. Within hours, Lutnick relayed the conversation to President Trump. On Tuesday, Trump announced via social media that he would block the Gordie Howe International Bridge, the crossing currently under construction.

The cause-and-effect is unmistakable. The pattern is now familiar.

To understand Team Trump's policymaking, recognize that it is driven by a collection of solo operators animated by petty grievances and zero institutional accountability. No boards. No shareholders. No civic responsibility. Layer in visceral disdain for "globalists," thier outsized egos, chips carried on every shoulder, and a pay-to-play approach to Trump administration pet projects. You arrive at exactly this brand of self-defeating economic nonsense.

This is not incompetence. This is design. And it is about to reshape supply chains, capital allocation, and geopolitical strategy for companies that need to cross US borders and reach international markets.

The Global Great Lakes region, spanning eight US states and two Canadian provinces, generates between $6 trillion and $9.3 trillion in annual GDP. If this region were an independent nation, it would be the world's third-largest economy. The region accounts for roughly 30 percent of combined US-Canadian economic activity, sustains 51 million jobs, and supports 107 million lives.

The Detroit-Windsor border alone moves $300 million in bilateral trade daily through existing infrastructure. This is not theoretical economics. It is the operational backbone of North American manufacturing, agriculture, logistics, and economic security.

Yet Team Trump's response to this economic powerhouse is unambiguous: Drop dead.

Protectionism plays well politically. It performs terribly economically. The promise of protection through isolation is a mirage that obscures harsh realities. Manufacturing supply chains crossing the US-Canada border do not represent abstract trade statistics. They represent real communities, real families, real livelihoods whose prosperity depends on seamless cross-border collaboration.

The Great Lakes region thrives because its manufacturing, agriculture, and logistics sectors have developed integrated, cross-border systems. Blocking a competing bridge does not enhance American competitiveness. It erodes it. It fragments supply chains. It increases transportation costs. It extends delivery times. It invites retaliation from Canada and signals to foreign multinational companies considering investing in America that US infrastructure policy is now subordinate to the real estate interests of Trump administration allies.

Trump's latest move signals the broader economic reality: A new era of persistent tariff volatility and policy uncertainty has arrived.

Three imperatives demand immediate attention from business leaders.

First, supply chain diversification is no longer optional. Companies must develop redundancies across production, sourcing, and distribution. Single-source dependencies become liabilities. Nearshoring, friendshoring, and geographic diversification are operational necessities, not cost luxuries. The era of just-in-time efficiency maximized without redundancy has ended.

Second, interest rates will remain elevated as the US government continues massive deficit spending while tariff policies generate inflationary pressures. Refinancing maturing debt becomes expensive. Capital expenditures require higher hurdle rates. Financial officers must stress-test balance sheets against 5%-8% scenarios.

Third, government relationships function as critical infrastructure. The Lutnick-Moroun example demonstrates that administration access determines outcomes. Border-region companies must actively participate in policy discussions. C-suite executives must allocate time to stakeholder relations.

This is where strategic communications becomes essential operational infrastructure. In an era when petty grievances drive trillion-dollar policy decisions, understanding the political economy of your sector is no longer a luxury. It is core risk management.

The Global Great Lakes region can either become a casualty of Team Trump's real estate vendettas or an anchor of continental resilience. That choice resides with business leadership willing to engage strategically in an era of permanent disruption.

Prepare accordingly.

-Marc

*****

Marc A. Ross is a geopolitical strategist and communications advisor. He is the founder of Caracal Global and is writing a book entitled Globalization and American Politics: How International Economics Redefined American Foreign Policy and Domestic Politics.