Tariffs Fell, Swipe Fees Battle, and Board Diversity Rollbacks

The rules are changing quickly, and businesses are stuck sorting out the fallout across pricing, payments, and governance.

In this week's edition:

SCOTUS Tariffs Decision: The Supreme Court narrowed the president’s emergency tariff playbook, but left companies with a new kind of uncertainty around what comes next and how refunds work.
IL Swipe Fee Case: The swipe fee fight is moving from Washington to the states, with Illinois at the center and a growing risk of a messy patchwork for national merchants and banks.
DEI Shifts Hit the Boardroom: board governance became the next DEI battleground, with several big names stripping diversity language out of director selection criteria under activist pressure.

Read more below for this week’s action steps and what to watch next.

Tariffs Struck Down, Markets Up, Uncertainty Still in the Room

Business Risk Level: High

WHAT HAPPENED

The Supreme Court struck down President Trump’s broad global tariffs, voting in a 6-3 decision that the emergency powers law he relied on does not authorize tariffs. Chief Justice Roberts wrote that when Congress gives tariff authority, it does so clearly, and it did not do that here.

The ruling knocks out the April 2 Liberation Day tariffs that set rates roughly in the 10 to 50 percent range, along with other IEEPA based duties tied to fentanyl trafficking and related actions.

The justices also sidestepped the biggest practical question for companies. They did not decide how refunds work or how far they go, leaving that to the lower courts. Estimates being discussed for potential refunds run into the hundreds of billions, which tells you how large the unwind could become if importers are ultimately made whole.

Stocks rose on the decision, but the relief did not last long. Trump quickly moved Friday to keep the tariff agenda alive signing an executive order imposing a 10% global tariff for 150 days while exempting certain products. And in a Truth Social post on Saturday said he would raise the global tariff rate to 15 percent using other legal tools, which are generally narrower and more time bound than the approach the Court rejected

BUSINESS RISK

Implications for business operations: Tariffs and refunds turn into a two-track problem. One track is the unwind, which is all about data, documentation, and claims management. The other track is the replacement risk, because the White House is clearly looking for alternate authorities, which means duty exposure could reappear in a different shape with different timelines.
Implications for reputation: If tariff costs were part of price increases, customers and employees will watch what happens next. Some companies will be pressured to lower prices quickly. Others will be questioned about why they cannot. Either way, you will want a consistent explanation that your teams can repeat without improvising.

DO THIS WEEK

For government affairs teams:

Build a one page view for leadership on exposure and asks. Include top import categories, biggest cost sensitivity, and what relief would matter most such as refund clarity, phase in time, exclusions.
Reengage your trade coalition map. Identify which associations are pushing for refund guidance, which are pushing for new tariff authority, and where you should show up quietly versus publicly.
Ask for process clarity, not a policy win. When you talk to USTR, Commerce, or Hill offices, focus on predictable timelines, transparent exclusion criteria, and workable implementation. It lands better than “no tariffs.”
Prep external messaging for customers and employees. Keep it short and non-political. Explain that pricing and supply decisions depend on legal and regulatory steps still moving.

For Legal teams:

Launch a tariffs war room. Legal, trade compliance, tax, treasury, procurement, and customs brokers. One owner, weekly cadence, clear decision log. First task for the war room is to decide your approach on refunds now, even if it is provisional.
Preserve evidence for potential refunds. Entry summaries, broker invoices, duty payment records, product classification support, and any pricing memos tying increases to tariffs.
Get ahead of accounting treatment. Decide how you will treat potential refunds in financials and disclosures so you do not scramble later.
Stress test replacement authorities. Even if you cannot predict the statute, you can pressure test impacts by category, country, and lead time.

WHAT TO WATCH NEXT

New Tariffs: Keep an eye on how fast the White House pivots from the Court loss to a new tariff plan. Within hours of the ruling, Trump put a 10% global tariff in place, then followed up on Saturday with a post saying he’s raising it to 15% “effective immediately,” calling it “fully allowed” and “legally tested.” That matters because your landed costs could shift again before you’ve even finished mapping refunds from the last round.
Legal Authority: pay attention to the legal hook the administration uses for any new tariffs and how quickly the first lawsuits show up. W e’re about to learn whether this is a quick stopgap or the start of a new tariff cycle built under a different law with different limits and timelines.
Refund Process: Be sure to track what the lower courts do on refunds and process. If it drags or gets inconsistent across cases, it can become a cash flow and accounting problem.
Congressional Response: Finally, don't forget to watch how Congress responds. As shared in last week's report, Congress is considering votes on legislation that may impact the President's authority to issue tariffs.

Swipe Fees Patchwork Risk Grows

Business Risk Level: Medium

WHAT HAPPENED

A few weeks ago, a federal court preserved a key part of a new Illinois law that bans swipe fees on the tax and tip portions of transactions, pushing the issue closer to real world implementation. That fight is not over though. A coalition of banking trade groups has now appealed the ruling, arguing the law will create operational confusion and harm the payments system. In their words, the American Bankers Association and its co plaintiffs called it “a serious error” that will “unleash chaos and confusion on Illinois consumers and businesses.”

Meanwhile, the Illinois outcome is still fueling interest in other states, with states like Iowa pressing for similar limits. And on Capitol Hill, supporters of the Credit Card Competition Act are content to let states move first, since a growing patchwork increases the odds Congress eventually gets pulled into writing one national rule.

BUSINESS RISK & MORE

If states keep taking different approaches on swipe fees, national merchants may have to run multiple tax and tip fee rules at once, which turns into a real POS and settlement problem. Banks and networks face margin and legal pressure that can spill into merchant contracts, dispute handling, and pricing. Finance ops and IT will absorb the workload as reconciliation and customer complaints rise when receipts don’t match expectations.

Consider asking your payments partners on how exclusions will work at settlement and confirm your POS can cleanly break out tax and tip by state. Keep an eye on the appeal and implementation guidance out of Illinois. And watch for more states picking different designs, which may raise the odds that Congress tries to preempt with one national rule.

DEI Moves to the Boardroom

Business Risk Level: Medium

WHAT HAPPENED

Several companies have dropped explicit diversity criteria from the language they use when selecting new board directors. American Express, Deere, and Johnson and Johnson removed or confirmed removal of demographic factors from director selection language, according to the National Legal and Policy Center, a conservative shareholder activist group.

Goldman Sachs also moved in the same direction, with reporting that it plans to remove race and gender related criteria from board evaluations after pressure from the same group.

The broader backdrop is a visible pullback in board diversity practices across corporate America, as legal and political pressure rises and companies reassess what they put in writing.

BUSINESS RISK & MORE

When companies tweak or drop board diversity language, it can raise real questions about employee trust and retention if the company has talked up DEI commitments internally. No matter where you stand on DEI, companies positioning on diversity and inclusion policies has become a reputational tripwire for both workforce development and brand equity, with activists on both sides watching closely and the headline version of the story traveling faster than the nuance.

This week’s practical move is to clean up your governance language so it’s consistent everywhere, and then write a plain English explanation that stays focused on qualifications, process, and compliance. At the same time, pressure test your director pipeline so you can still show you’re running a broad, high quality search. Over the next couple of weeks, watch for peer companies making similar edits and for shareholder proposals shifting away from hiring programs and toward board selection rules.

The Trendline

This week was about constraints that don’t reduce complexity. Courts narrowed emergency trade powers, activists pushed companies to rethink what they put in writing about board recruitment, and states kept pressing swipe fee rules in ways that could end up forcing Congress to weigh in. The rules are changing quickly, and businesses are the ones who have to turn those changes into workable decisions.

That’s where Trendline helps. We track the legal turns, policy moves, and stakeholder pressure that shape what comes next, across six connected risk areas. Whether you’re stress testing a tariff scenario, updating how you talk about board composition, or modeling the operational impact of state level fee changes, we help teams get clear on what matters and act early, not after the fact.