• This week we analyzed the Supreme Court decision on tariffs and what it could mean for the economy and your investments, so you do not have to sort through the noise on your own.
• While the headlines sounded dramatic, markets largely expected this development, which helped prevent major disruption.
• The situation will likely unfold over time through the courts and policy changes, not overnight, giving markets time to adjust.
• Several alternative tariff options remain available to policymakers, which means trade policy can continue without derailing long term economic momentum.
• If companies receive tariff refunds, stocks could benefit, while bonds may see some volatility. We are watching both closely on your behalf.
• If similar tariffs replace the ones that were struck down, markets may simply move forward with minimal long-term impact.
• Global negotiations and political developments could influence the path ahead, which is why continuous monitoring is so important.
• Our team evaluates how events like these affect your portfolio across stocks, bonds, and interest rates every single day.
• We have a disciplined strategy designed to respond if conditions worsen and to participate if opportunities improve.
• Our Investment Protect Strategy is built specifically to help reduce the impact of major market downturns on your retirement savings.
• If markets remain stable or positive, we stay positioned to capture growth while managing risk carefully.
• No matter how this tariff story unfolds, your plan is actively monitored by a team dedicated to protecting and growing your financial future.
• Our Investment Protect Strategy is specifically built to help reduce exposure during major market downturns and protect your retirement plan.
• Let us worry about all this boring financial stuff so you can focus on living your life and enjoying what matters most.
• We believe your retirement should be your second childhood without parental supervision, and our role is to help make that possible.

Transcript:

Ken Moraif
Hello everyone, and welcome to our weekly market alert video for today, which is February 20, 2026 and as always, we try to have more fun than a human being should be allowed to have when talking about all this boring financial stuff. And this week we’re going to be talking about tariffs. And when we get done, you are going to be an expert. You are going to regale. You are going to entertain your friends at cocktail parties with the incredible knowledge that you have about what tariffs are and how they work, because that’s what we do on this. So I want to say hi to all you skippers out there. I hope you are out there enjoying your second childhood without parental supervision. That’s your job. Our job is to get the gray hair and worry about this for you. And for those of you who are clients and not scripters yet, we’re going to do everything we can to get you there. And so in this installment, we’re going to talk about what happened. What are Trump’s options, and then what does it mean to our investments? What should we do about it going forward? Okay, so first of all, I want to start off with what happened. So what happened is that the Trump the Supreme Court struck down the tariffs that Donald Trump used under the emergency blah, blah, blah, blah blah act, right, which basically said that he can enact tariffs if there’s an emergency. Well, you could argue there really isn’t an emergency right now, and so therefore the the Supreme Court struck that down. So probably not too unexpected. The market really didn’t think this was not coming. Certainly the Trump administration knew this probably had some potential for coming. So the thing that’s interesting, though, is that the Supreme Court did not say that, here’s a remedy, here’s a punishment, here’s a whatever. You have to give the money back. How are you going to do all that? Who gets a refund, or where, or what? All they said was, this is illegal, but there’s no remedy. So if there’s going to be any remedy, money given back to companies, money given back to countries. If it’s all, if that’s all going to happen, it’s going to happen in the lower course. There’s going to be 8 million lawsuits that are going to come from this. Let me tell you something Donald Trump is not boring. Okay? So fasten your seat belt, because it’s going to be a ride figuring out what all this means and how it happens, and all of those kind of things. So it could take a while to go through the courts. In the meantime, those tariffs are still going to sit in the treasury and still potentially going to be there. Companies may react to this by stopping paying, but countries will have to continue so we’ll see how all of this plays out. So what are the strategies that Trump can use? Well, there are basically, and Paul, if you could put the chart up, so let me go through those with you. So first of all, which most likely is what he’s going to do, right? He’s going to switch to 122 and by the way, by the end of this, you’re going to learn a new language. And this is kind of fun. It’s kind of fun. It’s kind of like going to Starbucks, where you learn how to say, I want to latte Grande. You know, with Americano, I still don’t speak that language, but boy, does my wife. She knows that language well. So you’re going to understand all these different tariffs. So we’ll start with 122, all right, so this is where the President has authority, with no questions asked, to slap a 50% tariff on anybody, any country he wants, for 150 days. So that’s pretty much a guarantee, in our view, that that’s what Donald Trump is going to do. So the next one is 338 now 338 is a 1974 act that has never been enacted before, and basically it is if it’s a tariff that is used if the President feels that a country is trying to hurt our economy. Okay, so these tariffs kind of go if you think about it, you’ve got the tariffs against the economy. You’ve got tariffs against sectors, industries and then specific businesses. So these tariffs actually have logic to them. So 338, is, if there’s a threat against our economy, the president can then implement tariffs, and they can go from 50% for an unlimited amount of time. If this is a threat to our economy, President Trump can, can slap that on there and leave it on forever. The next one is 232 so 232 is what he’s actually using right now, and that’s against China. And this is national security. If there’s a threat to our national security, like fentanyl, or, you know, those kind of things, and the President deems that that is a threat to our our national security, then that is no limits on time or the amount. He has discretion to do that, but he has to prove it. That’s the thing about these that I’m going to talk about with you now, is that he has to prove that that’s the case. They require an investigation. They require time to prove it, and then the Congress has to approve it. Okay? So then we go into. A 201 so 201 is basically, if the foreign countries are going after certain industries within our country, okay, so, and this is the International Trade Commission, and this is the an independent, bipartisan, if there is such a thing in our country, agency in DC. So what they do is they look and they say, Are these foreign practices unfairly affecting trade against certain industries? And if that happens, then 50% for four years, the final one, then is 301, okay, so this one also requires an investigation and then going before Congress and an approval, and that is if trade policies are directed against specific US businesses, basically what we have is the President has the authority to use tariffs if we have a national security threat. Certain industries are under fire, specific businesses are under fire. So they’re all designed to address a specific thing, and they require an investigation. And the interesting thing about that is that if Donald Trump wants to go that route, all of that’s going to be going on heading into the into the midterms, and the politics of that are going to be very interesting to see how Donald Trump navigates that. And what we’ve seen in the past is that he has an incredible instinct for doing that. And let me tell you something, the ratings next week for the for the State of the Union address, oh my gosh, they are going to be through the roof. I’ll bet you, everybody wants to know what’s going to happen with all of that. So I want to bring Jordan Roach into the conversation, my chief investment officer to talk about what all of this means in terms of our investments, what we should do about it, if anything, how this is going to affect stocks, our bonds, our economy, all of that. So Jordan, welcome.

Jordan Roach
Thank you. What a great news cycle lift today, didn’t I kind of

Ken Moraif
otherwise a boring week. It would have, you know, actually, before this happened, we were talking about, what on earth do we have to talk about this time here, it wasn’t very much. We were actually going to, like, make it a short one, but President Trump, he’s always good for for some excitement. So first of all, let’s say that the remedies of all of this are that we that we have to refund all these tariffs to all these companies, right? And so now, all of a sudden, they’re going to be getting this 100 $80 billion back, right? Well, how does that affect their stocks? Do you think? Well, stocks

Jordan Roach
probably lift on that news. Lift pretty quickly, I would imagine now we have, you know, already gotten back through, you know, the market prior to Liberation Day. But I would expect that would be a nice tailwind for stocks. However, on the bond side of the equation, I think that would bring a lot of volatility, right?

Ken Moraif
Because now we’re talking about potentially, you know, the economy speeding up, right? Because if companies are getting this money back. You know, if there was a drag by the trade, the tariffs, then that drag is lifted, the economy is going to speed up, maybe. And then we see interest rates now potentially not going down as much as people

Jordan Roach
might have hoped might not. That’s right, and I think there could be questions on deficits widening and the strength of the dollar. So I think the bond market would have more to think through than the stock market short term, yeah.

Ken Moraif
And then, of course, the deficit, right? Because these that 100 80 billion was going to be used to some degree, to pay down the our deficits. And if that goes back in, the deficit

Jordan Roach
go back up again, probably long term, rates probably go up again. So I think again, we’ll see where this plays out, but probably, if it does, where there is some sort of payback, probably short term, good for stocks, probably bad for bonds.

Ken Moraif
Okay, let’s look at the other scenario. Let’s say that Trump does well, not the same scenario. If he does replace all that, then you know, if he replaces the tariffs that the the Supreme Court said are illegal with the tariffs I just went through, and their net result is the same. Then, ho hum, right? I mean, then we go back to, okay, the tariffs are still there, you know? Yeah, there was a little bit of volatility while this transition happened. But then we go

Jordan Roach
back to where we were, that’s right, I think, you know, you get bonds stay range bound. Stocks, you know, maybe have a reason to continue to march higher, but probably

Ken Moraif
home, like you said, Yeah. And most likely, the we’ve seen peak tariffs. Because if you go through all of those things, it looks like 15% might be where the top of these tariffs were, and they were at 2% before. So it’s a significant increase. But his ability, well, it depends what he comes up with. So that’s right. I mean,

Jordan Roach
we don’t know, because, let’s say 15 is a baseline. He just has cast a wide net just to get it across the board blanketed. But again, that’s probably the easiest thing for him to do short term. But we don’t know how much of these, you know, investigations he willing to go through to speed. Typically target certain industries, certain countries, to get it maybe to higher levels for the ones that he has a you know, he’s aiming at.

Ken Moraif
And then, I mean, to make it even more interesting, the midterms, if, if the investigations go beyond the midterms and they come back with, yeah, this is a big deal. I mean, this is high drama. That’s his high drama.

Jordan Roach
So I drama, it’s gonna keep on giving probably over the next six months.

Ken Moraif
Oh my, yeah. So just to have everybody, I’ll give you, I have to look at it too, because I’m kind of learning the language now. But just remember, you’re gonna be learning this 338 232 the 201 the 301 so just remember, 338 is if the tariffs from if another country is trying to harm our economy or is harming our economy. 232, is if it’s a matter of national security. 201, is if certain industries are being affected by what foreigners are doing. And 301, is if specific businesses are being addressed. So, you know, if China, for example, wanted to hurt our AI businesses, and they wanted to go over after a specific company like Tesla, then that could be something that the President has authority over. But boy, howdy, this is going to be an interesting period. The important thing, though, always that we have to remember is that, you know, things could unravel in a bad way, because now suddenly, you know, China could say, oh, yeah, well, okay, now we’re going to slap you with tariffs, and you can’t slap us back,

Jordan Roach
no recourse, because these other countries do not have some of these rules.

Ken Moraif
Yeah. So now all of a sudden, it’s like the only thing he can do is 15% and China goes, Okay, well, you’re you’re stuck with 15 we’re

Jordan Roach
not so we got nothing to negotiate

Ken Moraif
with, and you got nothing because you got to go to tie to a congress, and they’re not going to be your friend, you know, if it’s in the midterms. So now all of a sudden, he’s fighting with one hand behind his back, and that could be really bad for us, absolutely.

Jordan Roach
I mean, again, this could, you know, be anywhere from an absolute tailwind to a complete headwind against us. We don’t know where this is going to shake out, obviously, but it’s going to be

Ken Moraif
interesting to watch. Yeah. And you know, same with the French. I mean, you know tariffs, Donald Trump’s way of being does not make friends most of the time. So if that’s the case, then what they’re going to do is they’re going to say, Aha, now we can throw a 50% tariff on you, and you can only retaliate with a 15 percenter. So now you Donald Trump, need to come to the table, and our economy could be hurt and their economy could be benefited. If that were to happen, we could see a significant draw down in the stock market. It could go down significantly.

Jordan Roach
Oh, absolutely. I mean, this leads itself to where some sort of new catalyst comes into the equation that we haven’t had to account for yet. Yeah, so

Ken Moraif
this whole thing could turn into something bad, and if it does, is there something that we have that can help to protect our clients from a big, bad bear market? Jordan, can you think of it

Jordan Roach
we we would hope so that our investment protect strategy is right there behind us.

Ken Moraif
Is right there behind us. Yes, yeah, it’s designed to help us to avoid big, bad bear market losses. That’s right. And so should all this unravel in a negative way, then we do have that that we can fall that hopefully will help us to mitigate the downside significantly. So ladies and gentlemen, I told you we were gonna have more fun than a human being should be allowed to have when talking about all these boring tariffs, and we did. Didn’t you have fun? That was so fun? Oh my gosh. In fact, I can’t wait to watch this myself so I can see how much fun you had. And so I hope you did, in fact, have as much fun as we had. Making it for you, man, the word fun is getting used a lot. So thank you for watching. Make sure you like and subscribe. Share this with your friends, your family. You know people ask me, Are you still taking on clients? Heck, yeah, we are bring them. We want to talk to as many of your friends and family as we possibly can and bring them on as clients, if it’s appropriate. So share this with them. Thank you for watching. We’ll talk soon.

Please note: transcript has been modified after the time of recording. 

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