{"id":119595,"date":"2026-02-21T02:36:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-21T02:36:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/119595\/"},"modified":"2026-02-21T02:36:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-21T02:36:09","slug":"pa-businesses-legislators-celebrate-supreme-court-tariff-ruling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/119595\/","title":{"rendered":"PA businesses, legislators celebrate Supreme Court tariff ruling"},"content":{"rendered":"

From Philly and the Pa. suburbs to South Jersey and Delaware, what would you like WHYY News to cover? Let us know!<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

Karl Brown founded Pretzel Pete in 2012, building the company partly through exports that now make up around half of the company\u2019s sales.\n<\/p>\n

Brown, who has served as president of SB Global Foods for three decades, said \u201cthere is so much opportunity overseas that I think a lot of American companies miss.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\u201cAny kind of consumer brands that are made in the United States require and demand and receive a premium due to the goodwill and the value that consumers overseas see in the \u2018made in America\u2019 brand,\u201d he said.\n <\/p>\n

Pretzel Pete also relies on imports for ingredients that are \u201cimpossible\u201d to source domestically.\n<\/p>\n

However, President Donald Trump\u2019s implementation of broad \u2014 and sometimes haphazard \u2014 tariffs through the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA, had an \u201cimmediate impact\u201d on the company, Brown said, making those imports more costly and even \u201cprohibitive\u201d in some cases.\n<\/p>\n

Brown also worried other countries would soon enact their own retaliatory tariffs, concerned that would lead to decreases in profits and possibly even layoffs at his Hatboro-based factory, which employs around 80 people.\n<\/p>\n

But Brown is feeling some relief today, now that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against Trump\u2019s tariff power under the IEEPA.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a good day,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s a win for small businesses like mine, a major win in and credit to the Supreme Court for stepping up and I think doing the right thing.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

Small businesses paid tariff costs<\/p>\n

Pretzel Pete is far from the only local company to be impacted by the recent tariff crisis, with businesses across the board forced to pay more on imports, including manufacturers<\/a>, restaurants<\/a> and even coffee shops<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n

U.S. Sen. Ed Markey, D-Massachusetts, the ranking member of the Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, released a report<\/a> that found small businesses nationally paid more than $63.1 billion between March 2025 and November 2025 in tariffs, including $1.6 billion from Pennsylvania\u2019s small businesses.\n<\/p>\n

Area Democrats, who long opposed Trump\u2019s tariff policy, applauded the Supreme Court decision.\n<\/p>\n

U.S. Rep. Dwight Evans, D-Philadelphia, called it a \u201cwin for YOUR wallet!\u201d in a social media post<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Constitution is clear- only Congress has the power to levy tariffs and other taxes,\u201d he posted,\u201d adding he co-sponsored legislation to return the power to Congress.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From Philly and the Pa. suburbs to South Jersey and Delaware, what would you like WHYY News to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":119596,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[69,71,70,368,56697,25212,7738],"class_list":["post-119595","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news","tag-president-donald-trump","tag-supreme-court-ruling","tag-tariffs","tag-u-s-supreme-court"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119595","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=119595"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119595\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/119596"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=119595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=119595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=119595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}