At any moment, a Truth Social post — and now a court ruling — can upend the global trade system.

Why it matters: The world economy has never seen anything like this. The tariff legal fight injects new uncertainty into what was already a historically unpredictable situation.

• Businesses are in limbo about what it will cost to bring goods into the U.S.
• Foreign officials see leverage in trade talks that could drag out even longer.
• The billions in tariff revenue expected to help offset the cost of President Trump's tax bill could all but vanish.

What they're saying: "One day it makes sense to ship and the next day it doesn't," a port official told Axios.

The big picture: Economists had expected front-loading on steroids, where businesses would take advantage of a tariff pause and rush to import goods, which could push off the risk of shortages and consumer price hikes.

• Never mind all that now.

Driving the news: The Court of International Trade issued a late-night ruling on Wednesday that blocked many of Trump's sweeping tariffs.

• Another shocker came less than 24 hours later. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled the import levies could remain as it reviews arguments from both sides.
• "As the courts now play a larger role in the outcome of Trump's tariffs, trade policy uncertainty will only become more entrenched, stifling business investment and consumer spending on durable goods," Bernard Yaros, an economist at Oxford Economics, wrote in a note.

The intrigue: Europe's trade delegation was in Washington this week, just as it became clear the courts could kill many of the tariffs that brought them to the negotiating table in the first place.

• "It makes no sense to negotiate about that," Bernd Lange, a key European Parliament lawmaker leading the trade delegation, told Axios, referring to the "Liberation Day" tariffs that may ultimately be illegal.
• "I guess now we have a better position for negotiation," Lange said just minutes before the appeals court issued its stay, a sign of how quickly dynamics can change.
• Lange, who is on Truth Social, said he started waking up a half-hour earlier since Trump was inaugurated "to follow the news coming from the United States."

The other side: The economic threat of steep tariffs lingers.

• The administration could still impose tariffs under the same authorities officials previously used to impose levies on steel, aluminum and autos.
• Those powers require more processes to activate, but Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has said he is moving in "Trump time" to carry them out.
• While the Court of International Trade said Trump does not have unlimited tariff powers, the ruling was more ambiguous on whether he could impose some tariffs, according to Ilya Somin, one of the lawyers representing small businesses in the case.

The bottom line: Economic uncertainty was already at peak levels.

• It just got worse.

After firing more than 100,000 people, the White House sent out new "merit-based" guidelines for hiring federal workers, implementing a law passed with bipartisan support last year.

Why it matters: The Merit Hiring Plan sent to agencies yesterday by the Office of Personnel Management — basically the administration's human resources department — is a major overhaul to how the federal government hires employees.

• It explicitly orders agencies not to take race and gender into consideration in hiring.

Catch up quick: The memo carries out a law, the Chance to Compete Act, that was so noncontroversial it passed the Senate in late 2024 with no opposition.

• "These ideas have been around for a while, but hadn't been done in a comprehensive way," an OPM official told Axios.

Between the lines: What surely will be more controversial are the memo's provisions furthering the White House push to abolish diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.

• Agencies are ordered to immediately stop releasing data on workforce demographics, and to stop hiring people based on race and gender.
• That demographics data was key, proponents said, to understanding if there was widespread discrimination in hiring practices. The numbers will still be collected, just not released publicly.
• At its core, merit-based and skills-based hiring is considered to be a key recruiting method for building a diverse workforce.
• Some of the policies described in the memo are in line with typical DEI practices, like having interviewers ask a standardized set of questions to applicants to better provide an objective evaluation.

The idea here that has widespread support is to speed up and improve the federal hiring process to take less time, with under 80 days as the goal.

• Instead of evaluating applicants merely on education, hiring managers are meant to look at skills, a big talking point in the tech industry, in particular.

By the numbers: The push to speed federal hiring follows an aggressive push to fire government workers.

• The White House doesn't have an official tally, but since Trump came to office, around 59,000 workers have been fired and 76,000 took buyouts, according to a New York Times tally. (Some workers were reinstated, per court orders.)
• Another 150,000 cuts are planned across agencies.

The bottom line: "The government obviously is gonna hire again," the OPM official said.

Today marks my 2,468th and last day as an Axion, as Axios calls its employees.

I want to especially thank all of you who have remained subscribed to this newsletter from its early days as Axios Edge, which came out on Sundays, always featured a "Building of the Week," and occasionally was rife with quotes from "Withnail & I."

• It has been a pleasure and a great honor to be part of building what is now a magnificent Axios Business team, so I can't wait to see what Axios Markets becomes in its next incarnation.
• As for me, I'm spending a few weeks in Europe. With any luck I might get to see one or both of my favorite churches.