Tariffs are front and center ahead of Trump’s State of the Union

Yahoo Finance Video

Wed, February 25, 2026 at 1:30 AM GMT+9

President Trump’s new 10% global tariff rates take effect today — a response to the US Supreme Court’s striking down his sweeping trade policies — ahead of his State of the Union address Tuesday night.

Yahoo Finance Washington Correspondent Ben Werschkul reports on the topics Trump is expected to address in his speech tonight, including his justification for these new tariff rates.

To watch more expert insights and analysis on the latest market action, check out more Market Catalysts.

Video Transcript

00:00 Speaker A

And let’s zoom out now because the president’s going to address the nation tonight in his first state of the Union since taking office for the second time. Top of mind for investors will be tariffs after the Supreme Court dealt a major blow to the president’s signature trade policy. Joining us for more on what to watch, Yahoo Finance Washington correspondent Ben Wershkol. Ben, um, you know, tariffs going to be front and center here and the president has said he’s going to give a long one, he kind of hinted.

00:23 Ben Wershkol

Exactly. Yeah, he’s already said that this is going to be a long speech. In his telling this is a a chance to tout the economy. His overall goal here is clearly to try to sway public opinion on his economic stewardship and tariffs in particular. Tariffs are one of the the issues right now for the president that is polling the worst.

00:41 Ben Wershkol

Um as he tries to make the case both for his overall economic agenda and for these new tariffs that he’s these implemented that go into effect today, in response to the Supreme Court’s decision here. In terms of how how strenuous the president will be behind tariffs, that we I think there’s not a lot of expectations. We’ll see any change there. He’s very, he’s very pro tariffs. We saw him speak about tariffs for 45 minutes last Friday.

01:03 Ben Wershkol

But the theatrics and the tone around tariffs will be interesting. The Supreme Court justice will be in the room. um there just a few feet from the president. So whether he he repeats some of his attacks to their face with them sitting right there, will will be notable, as well as lawmakers who are growing increasingly skeptical of tariffs. And we’ve seen, we’ve seen any votes on tariffs on on Capitol Hill be negative to the president. There’s not enough votes to overturn a presidential veto, but the reaction there will be pretty interesting.

01:31 Ben Wershkol

in terms of whether they’re applauding, especially House Republicans applauding the president as as he touts his new tariff approach there. In terms of other things to watch from from the president’s speech tonight, we’re expecting kind of a mix of smaller bore announcements on a variety of economic issues that could be kind of a mix of positives and negatives for markets. Um, small positives, I think we’ll see the president tout more kind of government spending on things like defense and energy. There’s also reporting about how the president may talk about new retirement savings

02:00 Ben Wershkol

savings options, although there’s a lot of questions there about how far he can go there on retirement savings with Congress likely deadlocked. There’s also plenty of sectors that are in the been in the president’s cross hairs and we’re expecting a lot of kind of rhetoric from the president there. Pharmaceutical companies, credit card companies have had a lot of criticism from the president. So this is a much bigger stage where if he repeats those, that could be that could be significant for those for those companies. So it’s it’s going to be a mix for for tonight, but I think it’s fair to say that the markets are watching more closely because of the Supreme Court’s ruling last Friday.

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