SOTS 2nd Hour: SCOTUS Tariffs decision - Analysis, Movers, Market Impact & What Comes Next 2/20/26

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Sara Eisen (0:57)

Good Friday morning. Welcome to Squawk on the Street. I'm Sara Eisen with Carl Quintanilla and David Faber. We are live at Post 9 as always from the New York Stock Exchange. Coming up this hour, we're watching the Supreme Court. Potential key decision on the Trump administration's tariff agenda and on the fate of the Fed governor, Lisa Cook. We'll bring you any headlines as soon as we get them. Plus, Apollo's torsion slough will be with us to help break down today's big miss on GDP and hotter than expected inflation print. And we'll get to the latest on Iran after a breakout week for energy prices as President Trump says he'll make a decision about possible action within the next 10 to 15 days.

Carl Quintanilla (1:32)

We've worked our way through GDP, some PMIs. Now let's get some You Mission More with Rick Santelli. Hey Rick.

Rick Santelli (1:39)

Yes, indeed. Now these are our February final reads, February final reads on University of Michigan. And there's some big changes. The headline number was 57.3. It now gets downgraded to 56.6. That would be the weakest since just January of this year when it was 56.4. But the 57.3 we threw out and changed was the highest since August 25 So lost some ground there. Same for current conditions. 58.3 was our mid-month read, goes all the way down. Also 56.6. And it really is weird because all these numbers are the same. 56.6 in this case would be the weakest since January when it was 55.4. And once again, expectations, they stay at 56.6. They are at 56 So all three readings are exactly the same. And that would be the lightest, the weakest since December 25 Now let's go to the inflation numbers. 3.5 for one year goes down to 3.4. 3.4 would be the lightest inflation rate since January when it was 3.3. And finally, the 5 to 10 year at 3.3, well, that now equals where we were in January.

The lighter number would be December of last year. So we go from 3.5 to 3.4 on one year. And then the mid-month read on the 5 to 10 goes 3.4 to 3.3. So a little bit of good news on the inflation front. But once again, growth is on the light side, just like the GDP number. We also have new home sales for December out. And for that, we go to Diana Olek. Diana.

Diana Olick (3:22)

Well, Rick, new home sales in December, which remember is backdated because of the government shutdown, came in at 745,000 units, seasonally adjusted annualized rate. That is down 1.7 percent from November. November was higher than expected. So the street was expecting 738 We got 745, but it's still down month in month, but up 3.8 percent year over year. Now remember, these are based on signed contracts. So people out shopping in December, when mortgage rates were actually a little higher than they are today, they were around 6.3 percent. Today we're about 6.05 percent on the 30 year fixed. Price is down 2 percent. Supply did drop also. We got to go back to Carl for some breaking news.

Carl Quintanilla (4:04)

Thank you. We are going to have to talk some SCOTUS. Let's get to Amon Javers in DC. Hey Amon.

Eamon Javers (4:10)

That's right. The Supreme Court has just issued a ruling here on the president's tariffs, the so-called IEPA, that is the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. The Supreme Court was deciding whether or not that law was appropriately applied to the president's authority to create tariffs that he did throughout 2025 Now this applies to all the president's tariffs related to what he called Liberation Day, and that massive change in geopolitical and trade relations that we saw around the world. This ruling is now in, and we are looking at it right now, Carl. It's 170 pages. So I'm going to take a moment and read it here before I tell you what it says. But we do have the ruling from the Supreme Court here on the president's tariffs and whether or not they are legal or not. And we're going to go through it line by line here momentarily.