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Abortion-pill foes get a chilly reception at the Supreme Court

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ANTI-ABORTION ACTIVISTS were thrilled when Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016. Mr Trump had promised to appoint justices who would “automatically” overturn Roe v Wade, the 1973 case that protected reproductive rights. Three appointments later, the Supreme Court did just that in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organisation. But two years on, an oral argument on March 26th concerning mifepristone—a medication used in 63% of abortions in America—bodes ill for those hoping the court will help them keep limiting access to abortion care. At least for now.

Food and Drug Administration v Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine concerns a challenge to mifepristone by a group of doctors who oppose abortion. They persuaded a lower-court judge to de-authorise the FDA’s approval of the drug in 2000 despite a safety record comparable to Tylenol (paracetamol) and penicillin. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals somewhat softened that slap in the agency’s face last August. But it blocked the FDA’s moves in 2016 and 2021 allowing mifepristone to be used later in pregnancy (through ten weeks) and to be sent through the mail with a remote prescription.

Erin Hawley, representing the plaintiffs, defended the pill restrictions in her first argument at the Supreme Court. With her husband, Senator Josh Hawley, watching from the public gallery, she told the justices that the FDA’s policy on mifepristone left her clients facing a “Hobson’s choice”. Forcing doctors either to stand by their beliefs or care for a woman who took abortion pills and wound up in the emergency room, Ms Hawley said, is “intolerable”. Yet she faced deeply sceptical questioning from justices across the ideological spectrum as to whether her clients had suffered a concrete injury—a prerequisite for bringing a lawsuit in the first place.

Colloquy about “standing”, or a lack thereof, consumed perhaps three-quarters of the 90-minute hearing. Justices Elena Kagan and Amy Coney Barrett teamed up to demonstrate that even Ms Hawley’s two exemplars—Dr Christina Francis and Dr Ingrid Skop—had not suffered a concrete injury. Dr Francis may have had a patient who needed surgical attention after a complication from taking mifepristone, but she never raised an objection to treating her, Justice Kagan pointed out. And as Justice Barrett noted, it was actually her partner who performed the procedure, not Dr Francis herself: “I don’t read either Skop or Francis” as having “ever participated” in ending the life of a fetus or embryo.

The Alliance offered an alternative account of why the Alliance may have the right to sue—a theory known as “associational standing”. This is when an organisation brings a lawsuit based on harm to the organisation itself or to its members. Justice Clarence Thomas noted that it may be too “easy to manufacture” an injury rooted in an organisation’s bare opposition to a policy if all it has to show is “diverted time and resources” associated with bringing the lawsuit. Meanwhile, Justice Samuel Alito suggested that the court has been flexible with standing in past cases and seemed exasperated by the possibility that no one could come up with a plausible plaintiff. “Is there anybody who can sue and get a judicial ruling on whether what FDA did was lawful?” he asked. “Shouldn’t somebody be able to challenge that in court?” That’s quite unlikely, replied Elizabeth Prelogar, the solicitor-general who ably defended the FDA’s moves. But in any case, the plaintiffs in court don’t “come within a hundred miles” of the Supreme Court’s long-standing standards.

Several justices explored Ms Prelogar’s claim that federal law provides “conscience protections” that “would guard against the injury the doctors face”. Justices Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh seemed satisfied with her assurance that the government would not force a doctor with an objection to ending fetal life to participate in an abortion. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson added that the “obvious common-sense remedy” is to give individual doctors “an exemption” (which they already have) rather than, as she said to Ms Hawley, to “entertain your argument that no one else…in America should have this drug in order to protect your clients”.

Justice Neil Gorsuch jumped on this suggestion. Single-judge district courts, he lamented, too often refashion themselves as “a nationwide legislative assembly” when blocking actions of the federal government. The judiciary’s proper role, he said, is to “provide a remedy sufficient to address the plaintiff’s asserted injuries and go no further”.

Two justices seem ready to go significantly further. Justices Alito and Thomas invoked the Comstock Act, a law from 1873 that bans sending, among other “lewd” things, abortion medications and materials through the post. In 2022 the White House’s Office of Legal Counsel said that this 150-year-old law only prohibits posting such materials to people who will use them unlawfully. But Justice Alito was incredulous that the FDA did not at least mention the law when regulating mifepristone. And Justice Thomas told Jessica Ellsworth, the lawyer for Danco Laboratories (which markets the drug as Mifeprex) that it “specifically covers drugs such as yours”.

If three more justices who were mum on this 19th-century law have a similar view, a future administration could succeed in banning the posting of abortion medication. But for now, it seems, the nearly 650,000 American women who end their pregnancies each year with abortion pills will not see their access curtailed.

Visitors outside the Supreme Court on March 26th saw just how convenient mifepristone can be. Foot-high “Roe-bots” whizzed around the plaza ready to distribute abortion pills by prescription. Controlled by doctors in Massachusetts, New York and Washington, the bots can do a virtual consultation with a remote provider and dispense the medication on demand. A volunteer with Aid Access, the charity which organised the demonstration, noted the Roe-bots were perfectly legal. “It’s all very by the book,” she said. 

Economics

Trump tariffs’ effect on consumer prices debated by economists

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The U.S. government is set to increase tariff rates on several categories of imported products. Some economists tracking these trade proposals say the higher tariff rates could lead to higher consumer prices.

One model constructed by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston suggests that in an “extreme” scenario, heightened taxes on U.S. imports could result in a 1.4 percentage point to 2.2 percentage point increase to core inflation. This scenario assumes 60% tariff rates on Chinese imports and 10% tariff rates on imports from all other countries.

The researchers note that many other tariff proposals have surfaced since they published their findings in February 2025. 

Price increases could come across many categories, including new housing and automobiles, alongside consumer services such as nursing, public transportation and finance. 

“People might think, ‘Oh, tariffs can only affect the goods that I buy. It can’t affect the services,'” said Hillary Stein, an economist at the Boston Fed. “Those hospitals are buying inputs that might be, for example, … medical equipment that comes from abroad.” 

White House economists say tariffs will not meaningfully contribute to inflation. In a statement to CNBC, Stephen Miran, chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, said that “as the world’s largest source of consumer demand, the U.S. holds all the leverage, which means foreign suppliers will have to eat the economic burden or ‘incidence’ of the tariffs.” 

Assessing the impact of the administration’s full economic agenda has been a challenge for central bank leaders. The Federal Open Market Committee decided to leave its target for the federal funds rate unchanged at the meeting in March. 

The Fed targets its overnight borrowing rate at between 4.25% and 4.5%, with the effective federal funds rate at 4.33% on March 31, according to the New York Fed. The core personal consumption expenditures price index inflation rate rose to 2.8% in February, according to the Commerce Department. Forecasts of U.S. gross domestic product suggest that the economy will continue to grow at a 1.7% rate in 2025, albeit at a slower pace than what was forecast in January.  

Consumers in the U.S. and businesses around the world are bracing for impact. 
 
“There is a reason why companies went outside of the U.S.,” said Gregor Hirt, chief investment officer at Allianz Global Investors. “Most of the time it was because it was cheaper and more productive.” 

Watch the video above to learn how much inflation tariffs may cause.

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Economics

Trump’s tariff gambit will raise the stakes for an economy already looking fragile

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U.S. President Donald Trump speaks alongside entertainer Kid Rock before signing an executive order in the Oval Office of the White House on March 31, 2025 in Washington, DC. 

Andrew Harnik | Getty Images

President Donald Trump is set Wednesday to begin the biggest gamble of his nascent second term, wagering that broad-based tariffs on imports will jumpstart a new era for the U.S. economy.

The stakes couldn’t be higher.

As the president prepares his “liberation day” announcement, household sentiment is at multi-year lows. Consumers worry that the duties will spark another round of painful inflation, and investors are fretting that higher prices will mean lower profits and a tougher slog for the battered stock market.

What Trump is promising is a new economy not dependent on deficit spending, where Canada, Mexico, China and Europe no longer take advantage of the U.S. consumer’s desire for ever-cheaper products.

The big problem right now is no one outside the administration knows quite how those goals will be achieved, and what will be the price to pay.

“People always want everything to be done immediately and have to know exactly what’s going on,” said Joseph LaVorgna, who served as a senior economic advisor during Trump’s first term in office. “Negotiations themselves don’t work that way. Good things take time.”

For his part, LaVorgna, who is now chief economist at SMBC Nikko Securities, is optimistic Trump can pull it off, but understands why markets are rattled by the uncertainty of it all.

“This is a negotiation, and it needs to be judged in the fullness of time,” he said. “Eventually we’re going to get some details and some clarity, and to me, everything will fit together. But right now, we’re at that point where it’s just too soon to know exactly what the implementation is likely to look like.”

Here’s what we do know: The White House intends to implement “reciprocal” tariffs against its trading partners. In other words, the U.S. is going to match what other countries charge to import American goods into their countries. Most recently, a figure of 20% blanket tariffs has been bandied around, though LaVorgna said he expects the number to be around 10%, but something like 60% for China.

What is likely to emerge, though, will be far more nuanced as Trump seeks to reduce a record $131.4 billion U.S. trade deficit. Trump professes his ability to make deals, and the saber-rattling of draconian levies on other countries is all part of the strategy to get the best arrangement possible where more goods are manufactured domestically, boosting American jobs and providing a fairer landscape for trade.

The consequences, though, could be rough in the near term.

Potential inflation impact

On their surface, tariffs are a tax on imports and, theoretically, are inflationary. In practice, though, it doesn’t always work that way.

During his first term, Trump imposed heavy tariffs with nary a sign of longer-term inflation outside of isolated price increases. That’s how Federal Reserve economists generally view tariffs — a one-time “transitory” blip but rarely a generator of fundamental inflation.

This time, though, could be different as Trump attempts something on a scale not seen since the disastrous Smoot-Hawley tariffs in 1930 that kicked off a global trade war and would be the worst-case scenario of the president’s ambitions.

“This could be a major rewiring of the domestic economy and of the global economy, a la Thatcher, a la Reagan, where you get a more enabled private sector, streamlined government, a fair trading system,” Mohamed El-Erian, the Allianz chief economic advisor, said Tuesday on CNBC. “Alternatively, if we get tit-for-tat tariffs, we slip into stagflation, and that stagflation becomes well anchored, and that becomes problematic.”

Tariffs could be a major rewiring of the domestic and global economy, says Mohamed El-Erian

The U.S. economy already is showing signs of a stagflationary impulse, perhaps not along the lines of the 1970s and early ’80s but nevertheless one where growth is slowing and inflation is proving stickier than expected.

Goldman Sachs has lowered its projection for economic growth this year to barely positive. The firm is citing the “the sharp recent deterioration in household and business confidence” and second-order impacts of tariffs as administration officials are willing to trade lower growth in the near term for their longer-term trade goals.

Federal Reserve officials last month indicated an expectation of 1.7% gross domestic product growth this year; using the same metric, Goldman projects GDP to rise at just a 1% rate.

In addition, Goldman raised its recession risk to 35% this year, though it sees growth holding positive in the most-likely scenario.

Broader economic questions

However, Luke Tilley, chief economist at Wilmington Trust, thinks the recession risk is even higher at 40%, and not just because of tariff impacts.

“We were already on the pessimistic side of the spectrum,” he said. “A lot of that is coming from the fact that we didn’t think the consumer was strong enough heading into the year, and we see growth slowing because of the tariffs.”

Tilley also sees the labor market weakening as companies hold off on hiring as well as other decisions such as capital expenditure-type investments in their businesses.

That view on business hesitation was backed up Tuesday in an Institute for Supply Management survey in which respondents cited the uncertain climate as an obstacle to growth.

“Customers are pausing on new orders as a result of uncertainty regarding tariffs,” said a manager in the transportation equipment industry. “There is no clear direction from the administration on how they will be implemented, so it’s harder to project how they will affect business.”

While Tilley thinks the concern over tariffs causing long-term inflation is misplaced — Smoot-Hawley, for instance, actually ended up being deflationary — he does see them as a danger to an already-fragile consumer and economy as they could tend to weaken activity further.

“We think of the tariffs as just being such a weight on growth. It would drive up prices in the initial couple [inflation] readings, but it would create so much economic weakness that they would end up being net deflationary,” he said. “They’re a tax hike, they’re contractionary, they’re going to weigh on the economy.”

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Economics

Euro zone inflation, March 2025

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A man pushes his shopping cart filled with food shopping and walks in front of an aisle of canned vegetables with “Down price” labels in an Auchan supermarket in Guilherand Granges, France, March 8, 2025.

Nicolas Guyonnet | Afp | Getty Images

Annual Euro zone inflation dipped as expected to 2.2% in March, according to flash data from statistics agency Eurostat published Tuesday.

The Tuesday print sits just below the 2.3% final reading of February.

So called core-inflation, which excludes more volatile food, energy, alcohol and tobacco prices, edged lower to 2.4% in March from 2.6% in February. The closely watched services inflation print, which had long been sticky around the 4% mark, also fell to 3.4% in March from 3.7% in the preceding month.

Recent preliminary data had showed that March inflation came in lower than forecast in several major euro zone economies. Last month’s inflation hit 2.3% in Germany and fell to 2.2% in Spain, while staying unchanged at 0.9% in France.

The figures, which are harmonized across the euro area for comparability, boosted expectations for a further 25-basis-point interest rate cut from the European Central Bank during its upcoming meeting on April 17. Markets were pricing in an around 76% chance of such a reduction ahead of the release of the euro zone inflation data on Tuesday, according to LSEG data.

The European Union is set to be slapped with tariffs due in effect later this week from the U.S. administration of Donald Trump — including a 25% levy on imported cars.

While the exact impact of the tariffs and retaliatory measures remains uncertain, many economists have warned for months that their effect could be inflationary.

This is a breaking news story, please check back for updates.

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