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In a moment defined by rapid change and uncertainty across politics, culture, and the global economy, many are still navigating what this new era demands. Risk Takers spotlights the leaders who aren’t waiting for clarity but instead are seizing uncertainty as an opportunity to drive innovation, challenge convention, and spark lasting change across their industries.

While major corporations stayed silent, Victor Owen Schwartz sued the Trump administration over tariffs, taking his fight all the way to the Supreme Court and placing Victor Schwartz on the front lines of trade policy.

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Wall Street Journal Live Coverage: Tariff Challengers Take Their Pitch Outside the Courtroom After Hearing

“Let’s be clear: These tariffs aren’t paid by foreign governments or companies,” Victor Schwartz, founder of the small wine importer that is the lead plaintiff in one of the challenges. “It’s American businesses like mine, and American consumers, that are footing the bill for the billions of dollars collected monthly by our government.”

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New York Times: Highlights of the Supreme Court Arguments on Trump’s Tariffs

After the arguments wrapped, several of the small business owners who sued over President Trump’s tariffs gathered on the steps of the Supreme Court.

Victor Schwartz, the small wine importer who is the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit, told reporters the economic pain of the tariffs had been felt “across the country, from warehouse workers and truckers to retailers and restauranteurs.”

He added that he was disappointed that larger companies with more resources had not spoken up.

“When I was given the chance to speak up for small American businesses, I took it,” Mr. Schwartz said. “I had to – our very survival is at stake.”

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NPR Morning Edition with Nina Totenberg: SCOTUS to hear challenge on Trump tariffs. The case could redefine presidential power

NINA TOTENBERG: But the back-and-forth on tariffs around the world spooked American businesses, and they challenged the tariffs in court, contending that the president had exceeded his authority. Three federal courts have now ruled against Trump’s tariffs, and today, the Supreme Court hears arguments in the cases. One of the challengers is Victor Owen Schwartz, a wine and spirits importer from New York who’s been in business for 40 years.

VICTOR OWEN SCHWARTZ: And the thing is there’s such a misconception out there that foreign entities are paying this.

TOTENBERG: As he points out, tariffs are taxes paid on imported goods.

SCHWARTZ: I can’t say this enough times. Americans are paying the taxes. American business is paying the taxes, and it will be passed on to American consumers.

TOTENBERG: For small businesses like his, he says, it’s not just the 15% import taxes he’s paying, but the tariffs have plunged the value of the dollar compared to the euro. And when you add up all those costs, he says, they amount to about 35% more that he has to pay for his imported wines and spirits.

SCHWARTZ: You think I can increase the price of Sancerre by 35%?

TOTENBERG: So he charges more, eats part of the tariffs, and is down to a bare-bones profit that, in the long run, he says, is unsustainable. Countering that argument is President Trump, who sees tariffs as bringing in trillions of dollars to the federal government to be spent on his priorities. Tariffs, he says, are the most beautiful word in the dictionary.

TRUMP: These tariffs, they’re going to make us rich as hell. It’s going to bring our country’s businesses back that left us.

TOTENBERG: Whether that’s true or not is likely not going to make much difference to the Supreme Court. The issue the justices must resolve is whether the president has the power to set tariff rates on his own under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, known as IEEPA. Three lower courts have ruled that Trump exceeded his authority under both the statute and the Constitution. But the president argues that both allow him to impose tariffs in order to deal with persistent trade imbalances and to stem the flood of fentanyl coming into the United States. Both, he asserts, present national emergencies and pose a threat to national security. In arguments before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, Justice Department lawyer Brett Shumate, representing the administration, put it this way.

NEAL KATYAL: The idea that every president had this power all along – Presidents Reagan to Obama – and none of them knew it, and all of them have been spending all of this time negotiating with the Congress to try and get tariff authority when they had it from the start is just too fanciful to be believed.

TOTENBERG: He notes that Congress has created an extensive trade architecture, governing everything from how a president may deal with trade deficits and national security importation questions. For instance, a different statute does allow the president to increase tariffs by 15% when there’s a serious trade deficit, but only for 150 days.

KATYAL: President here has said, I can blow past all of those things and do whatever I want.

TOTENBERG: And that, he maintains, is contrary to the nation’s history dating back to its founding.

KATYAL: That is why we had the Boston Tea Party. It is why a revolutionary war was fought. The idea that you can tax Americans through the monarch’s decision alone is as foreign to our Constitution and our traditions as anything I have ever seen.

TOTENBERG: The briefs filed by interested groups in today’s case are remarkably lopsided, with 38 briefs supporting the challengers representing hundreds of organizations and individuals on the right, left and center. Also supporting the challengers are a large group of national security experts from previous Republican and Democratic administrations and a similarly diverse set of 44 economists on both the left and right, including four Nobel Prize winners. On the other side are just six briefs, mainly representing individuals who did not want to be interviewed for this story.

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The Hill: Toymaker, Wine Importer take on Trump’s Tariffs

“All I knew was this was bad for business,” Victor Schwartz told us.

Schwartz said he was always willing to join. But initially, he had concerns when asked to be the lead plaintiff, knowing a prominent clash with the Trump administration lay ahead. Family, friends and attorneys Schwartz knew pushed him forward.

“They all said I should do it anyway, because it was just too important,” Schwartz said.

“In my heart of hearts, I realized I had to do it,” he continued. “I kind of felt it was a moral imperative. Somehow it landed on my doorstep. I could not walk away from it.”

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ABC News: ‘Worried about my business’: New Yorker who’s lead plaintiff in Trump tariffs Supreme Court case

“When Victor Schwartz abandoned the world of banking in the 1980s for the vineyards of France, his unorthodox career choice unknowingly put him on a collision course with President Donald Trump and the signature issue of his second administration.

Schwartz, the founder of a wine and liquor importing business in New York, is now the lead plaintiff suing President Donald Trump over his sweeping global tariffs — a case whose outcome could not only roil the global economy but also, he argues, destroy Schwartz’s family business.

“I’m worried about my business, and I’m worried about a lot of other businesses in this country,” Schwartz told ABC News. “It’s a very, very tight, tight situation, and you’re going to see companies go out of business over this. It’s a terrible, terrible burden.”

Ahead of Wednesday’s Supreme Court oral argument, Schwartz projected confidence about the strength of his case. Two lower courts have ruled in favor of Schwartz and four other businesses that worked together to challenge the tariffs. Their case is being heard alongside a case brought by another small business as well as a coalition of state attorneys general.

“I feel great for a number of reasons,” he said. “We’ve got a great case.”

However, Schwartz acknowledged that the ongoing national conversation about tariffs, led by Trump, has been frustrating to witness. Trump has argued that tariffs will raise hundreds of billions from foreign companies and rejuvenate the American economy.

“I cannot say this enough times, foreign entities are not paying the tariffs. American companies are paying the tariffs. I am paying the tariffs, and soon consumers will be seeing the cost increases,” he said. “They’re gloating all over, all the billions of dollars that they’re collecting, they think it’s great. What they don’t say is they’re collecting it from American businesses. It’s an incredible burden, and especially a credible burden, on small businesses.”

With the wine and spirits importing already a small-margin business, Schwartz said that the fluctuating cost of tariffs — combined with the weakening of the U.S. dollar and the shift away from alcohol drinking — has significantly hurt his bottom line. The nature of the alcohol business in the New York tri-state area, he added, makes it even harder to adjust to the tariffs.

“We can’t just change our prices if we feel like it,” he said. “We have to post our prices in New York and New Jersey over a month ahead of time, and that means we say what everybody pays for a case of wine, what the discounts are if you buy three cases of wine or 10 cases of wine, we can’t just change that, because some underlying factor changes.”

Schwartz said he’s grateful for the chance to challenge the tariffs in court.

According to Jeffrey Schwab, Senior Counsel and Interim Director of Litigation at the Liberty Justice Center, Schwartz and the other small business owners were selected after speaking with approximately 50 businesses owners that were concerned about the tariffs.

“I think we ended up with five that we thought would be good plaintiffs, that they wanted to be plaintiffs,” he said. “They understood the magnitude of the case, the fact that we would be suing the President of the United States, that kind of thing.”

As he prepared to hear the Supreme Court arguments on Wednesday, Schwartz said he couldn’t be more aware of the stakes of going up against the President in a case that could determine the long-term viability of his business.

“Going up against the executive branch, going up against Trump, you know, they take no prisoners. There’s a lot at stake,” he said.

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USA Today: Trump says his tariffs will help American businesses. So why are they suing?

“These tariffs threatened the very existence of small businesses like mine, making it difficult to survive, let alone grow,” Victor Owen Schwartz, who founded his wine and spirits import business nearly 40 years ago with his mother, said of his decision to take on the president. “I was shocked that those with much more power and money did not step up.”

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Drinking on the Job Episode 294: Wine Importer VOS Selections vs President Trump in Supreme Court

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NPR Business: Most of President Trump’s tariffs are illegal, U.S. court rules

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The Indicator from Planet Money: The Legal case for – and against – Trump’s tariffs

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BBC News – US announces tariffs on dozens of countries

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NO president has the constitutional authority to single-handedly impose taxes on the American people. That power belongs to Congress.

MORE from LJC’s Reilly Stephens and client Victor Schwartz on @BBCnews pic.twitter.com/li1c09UuA3

— Liberty Justice Center (@LJCenter) August 4, 2025

Financial Times – US businesses suing Trump over tariffs say trade pacts ‘hardly relief’

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“Have you ever had a tax get quintupled overnight? – Victor Schwartz”

Cato Institute’s Free Society Magazine: How One Man’s Passion for French Wine Sparked a Challenge to Trump’s “Emergency” Tariffs

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“While VOS Selections is still a small family-run business, it’s also a grand testament to the way free trade enriches both Americans and the rest of the world. Through just one company, Americans have access to dozens of fine sakes from across Japan; hundreds of wines sourced from the Mediterranean coast to Central Europe; and an assortment of spirits crafted in places as varied as Lebanon and New Zealand. It’s a luxury that would’ve been unimaginable by even the greatest emperors of millennia past.” – Paul Best

BFM Business: Ce marchand de vin a fait annuler les droits de douane de Trump

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National Review: Striking Down Tariffs: A ‘Coup’ Prevented, Not Attempted

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“Rejecting unilateral presidential tariffs was not an act of judicial activism by the U.S. Court of International Trade. It was a defense of the Constitution’s separation of powers.