“To be very frank, it’s a real mess.”

So said Itsunori Onodera during an interview with Japanese television over the weekend.

He was referring to tariff policy in the US following the Supreme Court’s ruling that Donald Trump assumed too much authority for himself in relying on The International Emergency Economic Powers Act to implement sweeping levies on America’s trade partners last year.

If you’re unfamiliar, Onodera’s a somebody in Japan’s ruling LDP. He served as defense minister for Shinzo Abe twice. Now, in addition to advising the prime minister on security, he runs a key tax policy panel for Sanae Takaichi.

Notwithstanding Trump’s attempt to spin the unfavorable high court ruling as a step towards tariff clarity (“We’ve taken the uncertainty of tariffs out,” as he put it, during an aggravated rant), most see what Onodera sees: “A real mess.”

Although it won’t make sense for Japan to push the issue in terms of negotiating with Trump for a better trade deal given that, as Onodera noted, “the top priority” for Tokyo was cars and the auto tariffs “are not covered by [the] Supreme Court decision,” other countries might freeze their respective MOUs with the White House.

On Sunday, for example, a top trade official in Brussels suggested “halting” legislative work on the EU’s trade deal with Trump in light of what Bernd Lange called “pure tariff chaos from the US.”

“No one can make sense of it anymore,” Lange, chairman of the European Parliament’s trade committee, said. “Do new tariffs based on Section 122 not constitute a breach of the deal?” he wondered.

It’s a good question. On Friday, after the SCOTUS ruling, Trump availed himself of Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 in announcing an across-the-board 10% global tariff. The statute gives the president the authority to institute tariffs of up to 15% “for a period not exceeding 150 days.” Just hours later, Trump raised the 10% tariff to the 15% maximum.

“No one knows” what US trade policy will be on any given day, Lange went on. “Clarity and legal certainty are needed before any further steps are taken” on negotiations.

Trade officials all over the world are thinking along the same lines even if they don’t complain publicly for fear of retaliation. I doubt seriously that the clarity Lange’s looking for is forthcoming.

In the days ahead, the Trump administration will probably preview a series of 232 and 301 probes aimed at reconstituting the full force of a tariff regime weakened by the SCOTUS decision.

It’s possible — and to let him tell it, likely — that the average US tariff rate will end up higher than it would’ve been assuming Howard Lutnick and the rest of the gang can find enough in the way of “evidence” to justify accusing other countries of threatening America’s national security with imported goods (Section 232) or engaging in “unreasonable” acts that “burden or restrict US commerce” (Section 301).

Any way you cut it, tariffs are going to become a fixture of the weekly news cycle again, and it’s hard to see a light at the end of that tunnel — or any other tunnel to do with this administration for that matter.

Against the backdrop of what’ll surely be an unceasing flow of tariff news, there’s a smattering of US macro data on offer this week. Conference Board confidence is probably the most important release, with the caveat that “important” is relative: There are no top-tier updates scheduled.

Recall that the Conference Board gauge printed a truly miserable 84.5 in the last readout, the lowest in a dozen years. Economists are looking for a slight uptick from the February print, due Tuesday.

The figure above — the average of Conference Board confidence and the University of Michigan sentiment series — serves as a reminder you probably don’t need: The consumer mood in America is God-awful. Households never recovered psychologically from the pandemic.

The editorial accompanying the final read on University of Michigan sentiment for February (released late last week) was dejected. “Consumers do not perceive any material differences in the economy from last month,” survey director Joanne Hsu said, adding that nearly half of respondents “spontaneously mentioned high prices eroding their personal finances.”

Indeed, if you look at the survey’s forward-looking measure of expected household finances, the 12-month average hit a new record low this month. The chart below’s so bad it’s funny — from a gallows humor perspective, I mean.

As BMO’s Ian Lyngen remarked, that 12-month average “has been running in sub-100 territory for eight consecutive months [and] the current run marks the first dip into sub-100 territory for average financial situation expectations since 1980.”

Again, that’s from the Michigan sentiment survey. I doubt the update on the Conference Board’s mood metrics will materially change the (exceedingly dour) narrative.

Also on deck this week in the US: PPI (Friday) and an update on home prices (Tuesday).

Coming full circle, Japan’s Onodera warned over the weekend that Trump’s risking curtailed foreign investment with the never-ending tariff drama. “I’m worried that businesses will shift away from the US even further if the domestic situation there remains this messy,” he said.