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Book in minutes at vaccassist.com. Sponsored by Pfizer. It's 5.05. Good Monday morning to you and welcome into the Carolina Journal News Hour, Charlotte's FM News Talk, 107.9 FM, WBT. I'm Nick Craig.
A major 6-3 decision from the United States Supreme Court on Friday against the Trump administration's widesweeping tariff policies that were enacted back during Liberation Day in April of 2025. To walk us through the legal side of that this morning, it's my pleasure to welcome Mitch Kokai from the John Locke Foundation to the Carolina Journal News Hour. Mitch, all the buzz Friday and through the weekend was about these tariff policies. They've been a major part of the Trump administration. This legal battle has been playing out for quite some time.
I think from what I remember, though, there was discussions that this decision was going to be released a couple of months ago. It's been kind of a ticking clock just waiting for that to happen. What is the latest that you're following out of the courts? Yes, that speculation had been that we could see a decision in January. And of course, the Supreme Court decides cases on its own timetable, does not ever set a deadline for itself, except for the fact that you expect that most decisions will come out by the end of June or beginning of July of any case that the Supreme Court has heard during the previous year.
But a lot of folks had thought because of the impact of tariffs and the fact that if there were going to be refunds, that you'd like to get a decision as soon as possible. They've been thinking that perhaps January. But instead, the court waited until February to release its decision. And as you mentioned, it was 6-3, but it's not quite that simple. What happened was that six justices really coalesced around the key point, which was that the International Economic Emergency Powers Act, or IEEPA, a federal law passed in the late 1970s, does not give the president power to put forward tariffs for any reason.
Declare an emergency and then you can have tariffs. The justices other than Kavanaugh, Alito, and Thomas, three of the so-called conservative justices, other than those justices, the rest of them signed on to this idea. And Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion. Behind that 6-3, there were a lot of other interesting divisions. The 6.
Agreed on most of what Roberts wrote, but the three liberal justices on the court, who you usually see or often see on the losing end of 6-3 decisions, they parted with Chief Justice Roberts. Justice Amy Coney Barrett and Justice Neil Gorsuch on this issue of what's called the major questions doctrine. And one thing that Roberts wrote about was That in under the major questions doctrine, if the executive, if the president is going to claim some sort of power that would normally be something handled by Congress, there has to be some clear statement. Or a clear authorization from Congress that the president has this power. And Roberts wrote that you don't have that here.
There's no clear authorization that the president can use IEEPA to enact tariffs. The three liberal justices basically backed off and said, We're not supporting that piece of it. We don't really think you have to deal with the major questions, Doctrine. Then there were a couple of Concurring opinions from Neil Gorsuch and Amy Cody Barrett. Talking about the major questions doctrine, Gorsuch basically called out all of his colleagues who've supported it in the past, who didn't support it in this case.
And then Barrett basically looks like she wrote her concurring opinion just to bicker with Gorsuch about what he wrote. And then there were a couple of different dissents in the case. You had the main dissent written by Brett Kavanaugh that said, no, if you look at the history, if you look at the text, this is a power that the president should have because of his power to regulate imports. And then the second dissent from Clarence Thomas said, look, this is something that has always been something that the president has been able to do, go back way beyond this law in 1977. And the president has always had a power to have this sort of impact over imports.
So very interesting divisions in the Supreme Court. And for those who are wondering what this means for tariffs, The real bottom line is that the president can no longer rely. On this IEEPA law to have the broad authority to just declare an emergency and then have tariffs in place. That doesn't necessarily mean. That he can't have tariffs.
He would just have to rely on some other legal basis, and those other legal bases probably require more interaction with Congress.
So, if he's going to continue with tariffs, he likely will have to have some sort of interaction with Congress to do it. He can't just say, There's an emergency, I'm going to have a tariff because that's something that now the Supreme Court has struck down. We are discussing the legal side of this right now. We'll talk about those political implications coming up with the CEO and president of the John Locke Foundation, Donald Bryson, here in just a little bit on the Carolina Journal News Hour. Mitch, I'm glad you pointed that out because there are some other tariff laws that are on the books going back to the mid-1930s, have been on the books almost 100 years, a couple of sections in that that may crack open the door for this administration to go forward with some of these tariff protocols and policies under a different channel.
One of the arguments I remember in the oral arguments made by this administration back in front of the Supreme Court late last year was that some of these congressional laws as it related to IEPA, which is what we're talking about and what the courts dealt with, Mitch, they felt that it was a little bit ambiguous, that it didn't necessarily claim exactly what could or could not be done. The administration said, well, because of some of the ambiguous nature, we're going to do what we want. Obviously, others fighting against them legally said no. because it's ambiguous doesn't mean you have free reign to do pretty much whatever you want. Yeah, and you saw from the opinion that came out from the Supreme Court that took up 170 pages, with seven of the nine justices deciding to write something about it, that this was not an open and shut case.
The majority certainly looked at this and said, no, you can't go from Either the history or the text or any of the discussion about the IEEPA and say that this is something that gives the president the power to enact tariffs anytime he thinks there is an emergency. But there were three justices who thought that he did, that thought that the law. Did allow the president to have that authority. But it's not an open and shut case. And it will be interesting to see now where the Trump administration goes from here.
I think one of the reasons that you saw the Trump administration go with IEEPA was because that really opened the door for the widest latitude to enact tariffs. Basically, the president could say, we have this. international economic emergency. And one of it dealt with immigration and some other issues. And once you had that emergency, then the tariffs could be used and you didn't have to consult Congress at all.
Now that the court has struck down IEEPA as a basis for the tariff. The Trump administration will have to regroup. And try to use some other basis. And it's likely that this basis would, in some respects, have some sort of input of Congress.
Now, I should also point out, and I'm sure if you ask him directly, Donald Brison's going to say the same thing. The John Locke Foundation opposes tariffs of all kinds.
So, whether the president has authority to issue tariffs, he shouldn't do it because it's a bad idea for the economy. But that aside, Now the legal issue that has been determined is that this particular federal law cannot be used by the President to enact tariffs, which means if he wants tariffs, he's going to have to go about it in a different way. Mitch, let me ask you a little bit of a hybrid political-legal question on this. You listened to these oral arguments when they took place a couple of months ago, as did many individuals as this discussion was playing out. Do you think the administration was blindsided by this decision?
I mean, I think most folks that follow this pretty closely had a pretty strong indication that the nation's highest court was probably not going to rule in favor with the administration. Yeah. I'm not sure if you could say blindsided. My guess is the Trump administration hoped it would win. I mean, it got three votes and with two more votes would have won.
But I'm also thinking that if the administration was looking at this soberly and reading the tea leaves and looking at the law and what it actually said and looking at precedent, they probably would have realized it's a close. close argument that you might be able to win, but you would basically have to be relying on the justices to kind of read some things into Previous powers that past presidents have had, and not really looking clearly at the text of the law.
Now, that might have been enough to say, well, let's give it a shot, but I think certainly the Trump administration wanted to have as much flexibility as possible with tariffs and looked at the options available to it and said, well, IEEPA looks like a good one. Maybe the courts will give us this authorization. And if so, We can really just, at our own whim, say, here's an emergency, and so we're going to invoke tariffs.
Now they've been. Handcuffed, or there's a new obstacle, you could say, to have that sort of action. And it will take a much more of an interaction likely between the Trump administration and Congress to get something going on tariffs.
Now, Depending on how the legislation would have to go through Congress, there's probably going to be some support because at least under this current Congress, the House and the Senate are both supportive generally of Trump administration proposals. And so if they put forward something that aligns with what the House and Senate are willing to go along with, it probably can get support. We have just seen, though, with this administration, the idea of trying to get things done as quickly as possible and without interaction from the other branches of government. And so now it'll probably require a little bit more cooperation than the Trump administration really wanted to have to deal with. Mitch, would you say that overall this is a political win for separation of powers?
I mean, essentially what this all boiled down to is the fact that, hey, these tariffs are taxes. That policy needs to be set by those that are in the legislative branch, not by those set in the executive branch. Do you see that as a major win for that? Yeah, it's definitely went for the separation of powers. And in fact, the decisions basically alluded to that, that the law to enact a tax, and a tariff is in pretty much all respects a tax.
The power to enact a tax belongs to Congress. And if Congress is going to give the president some sort of power that would involve taxation, there really has to be some sort of clear delegation of this, that they couldn't just say, you know, you have the power to regulate imports, and that then extends to the taxing power, which is a really core legislative power. And so I think the Supreme Court is basically putting its stamp on that piece of the separation of powers discussion and saying, look, Congress can give authority to the president. But if it's going to give authority on something that involves taxation, that involves forcing people to pay something to the government. That that's something that Congress needs to be really clear about, and it wasn't when it passed this law back in 1977.
Mitch, it's not often that we talk about rulings from the United States Supreme Court. Most of them don't really have a major impact here on North Carolina. I always ask you this question, what is the next step? Does this administration have the ability to appeal anything? Or now that the High Court has spoken and made their final ruling, they just have to find another avenue if they want to continue down this road of tariffs.
Yeah, they can't appeal anything on this particular set of cases. And we're talking about two cases that dealt specifically with IEEPA. That does not mean the end of tariffs, though, because the Trump administration, as we've been talking about, will look at its other options, other laws that would give the president authority. I mean, it could also make things simple and go to Congress and say, hey, Congress, why don't you pass a law that would give me the authority to enact tariffs? If Congress did that, I think that everyone, even those who were opposed to tariffs, would say, well, Congress is within its right to do that.
But that is not how the Trump administration proceeded initially. And it may be something that the Trump administration will look at now. If not, I'm sure that to enact tariffs or to keep the tariffs that he has now and keep them going, he'll try to find some other legal justification. But in terms of using IEEPA as the basis for tariffs, that's over. The Supreme Court has spoken, and that's the highest court in the land.
What it says goes. It's going to be an interesting couple of months to watch this play out. It's even going to be an interesting week. The president, State of the Union, coming up on Tuesday evening, you would imagine he'll probably have some additional comments about that, Mitch, as some of the, maybe not all of them, but some of the Supreme Court justices will be sitting in the front row, likely staring right at him. He's staring right back at them.
We'll continue our discussion and conversation on that over on our website, CarolinaJournal.com. We appreciate the legal analysis this morning. Mitch Kokai from the John Locke Foundation joins us on the Carolina Journal News Hour. Uh oh. You're still grooving, still connecting, still loving, still turning up, still thriving.
You still got it, but your immune system, it weakens as you age. That's where vaccines come in. They help train and strengthen your immune response to fight off respiratory illnesses like flu, pneumococcal pneumonia, RSV, or COVID-19. Ask your doctor or pharmacist which vaccines you need. Book in minutes at vaxassist.com.
Sponsored by Pfizer. It's 524. Welcome back to the Carolina Journal News Hour, Charlotte's FM News Talk 107.9, WBT, and some other statewide news. This morning, we'll be joined by Donald Bryson, the CEO and president of the John Locke Foundation, coming up here in just a couple of minutes, turning our attention to the education system. North Carolina's public education leaders are exploring ways to overhaul the state's school accountability system.
The current model relies heavily on end-of-grade and end-of-course assessments, with schools grading on an A to F scale, with the end-of-grade tests to work resulting making up nearly 80% of the school letters grade, and the 20% remaining is typically dependent on the students' academic growth compared to previous years.
However, during a meeting on February the 19th, members of the newly formed State Board of Education Task Force on Accountability for Public Schools voiced concerns with the existing system's narrow focus. Participants questioned the effectiveness of one-day testing to capture a student's entire year of learning, citing it as a source of pressure and anxiety for children and parents rather than fostering public trust. They also noted that the current measure often fails to account for the full range of courses, teacher conditions, or softer, more holistic skills like civil engagement, adaptability, and resilience that are vital for long-term success. The working group will ultimately make a series of recommendations to the entire, the full North Carolina State Board of Education to reform the accountability system with the task force set to compose the task force composed of state-level policymakers, including members of the state board, the governor's office, and some staff members there, the State Department of Public Instruction, in addition to county commissioners, school board chairs, district superintendents, principals, and other employees within public education across the state of North Carolina. The task force will also incorporate perspectives from the business community, charter school representatives, classroom educators, parents.
And students, all of that for the task force working with a nonprofit group called the Center for Assessment to develop some of those recommendations. Dr. Bob Lubke, who is the director of the Center for Effective Education at the John Locke Foundation, said if leaders are really serious about being skeptical about the current accountability system and building a new model from the ground up, wouldn't it make sense to have more outside voices contributing to the discussion? The voices from inside of the system certainly argue against this assertion. Why is the question that I would ask?
Alan Duncan, who is the vice chair of the State Board of Education, encouraged members to be quote skeptical and question everything about the current approach, saying we want to keep the whole child in mind. Our focus has got to be what's in the best interest of our children and how do we provide them with the best education that we can. Mo Green, who is the superintendent of public instruction, that is a elected position here across North Carolina, referring to four-year graduation rates, saying, we sit in a moment where we have historic highs with regards to graduation rates. 20 years ago, we weren't anywhere close to that number. Green also referenced advanced placement exams, 72.1% of students scoring a 3, 4, or 5 on those exams and participating in the career and technical education coursework, that's CTE, with over 38,000 credentialed learners.
He pointed to crime stats, which are 10,000 incidents out of 1.5 million students.
So the discussion there from Green, he continued by saying the narrative that's out there is that not one of that is actually showing up in our school. Yeah. Our accountability system also needs to make sure we are telling the story as to what it says. Yes, there's a lot of work to do, but gosh, North Carolina's public schools may not ever have been better for more kids in history. In recent years, state lawmakers have considered various bills to either study or revamp school accountability metrics or changes to the system entirety.
However, none have successfully moved through both chambers of the General Assembly and made their way to the governor for a signature. The task force has five more meetings set on its calendar to draft or to go through this process. The timeline scheduled as of right now includes April the 16th, June 18th, August 20th, October 15th, and December 17th. Members plan to start writing their final recommendations in that mid-December meeting with the goal of it is to make that presentation to the State Board of Education sometime in May of 2027. With a vote by June of that same year.
If approved, the experts suspect that the new model could roll out statewide sometime in October of next year, 2027.
However, it is important to note that it would need legislative approval.
So we will see what some of this looks like as we go through the remainder of this year and into the early and middle parts of next year. You can read some additional coverage of that this morning over on our website, CarolinaJournal.com. David Bass has got the story with the headline: New Task Force Eyes Revamp of North Carolina Accountability System. You're still grooving, still connecting, still loving, still turning up, still thriving. You still got it, but your immune system, it weakens as you age.
That's where vaccines come in. They help train and strengthen your immune response to fight off respiratory illnesses like flu, pneumococcal pneumonia, RSV, or COVID-19. Ask your doctor or pharmacist which vaccines you need. Book in minutes at vaccassist.com. Sponsored by Pfizer.
Fuck. It's 5.36. Welcome back to the Carolina Journal News Hour, Charlotte's FM News Talk 107.9. WBT, I'm Nick Craig. Good morning to you.
Continuing our coverage of what has been a busy news weekend after a major decision, 6-3 decision by the United States Supreme Court on Friday as it relates to overarching tariff policies put out under the Trump administration. To walk us through some of the political implications of that this morning, it is my pleasure to welcome the CEO and president of the John Locke Foundation, Donald Bryson, to the Carolina Journal News Hour this morning. Donald, I think many folks were anticipating this. We almost, almost two months, we've been kind of waiting for the Supreme Court schedule to catch up, waiting for this ruling. Give us your initial and gut reactions to what you saw on Friday.
I think the betting markets, which is a strange thing that we have now, were saying that these were likely to be these tariffs were likely to be overturned under the authority that the President. was talking about under IEPA, the Emergency Powers Act. A while back. And it took a while for the Supreme Court to rule. These arguments were done back.
In late 2025, here we are in late February of 2026. Um then I can go. President Trump is upset about it. I think he called it a disgrace in a meeting of governors at the White House. From my standpoint, I think it was the right decision.
I think it was correct in that. The president is not granted that authority under the Constitution. That's not a judgment on Donald Trump. As a person or as a president, it's just My plain reading of the Constitution. We'll see what happens next.
Will Congress? Actually, do its job and legislate. We'll see. Speaker Johnson hasn't shown much of a willingness to actually want to pass a bill. Um Mm-hmm.
I I think that is uh In my opinion, legislative malpractice. Not that I wanted to pass a tariff bill necessarily. I'm opposed to the policy, but that is the job of the legislature. And that was the ruling of the Supreme Court. Look, you know, we can have tariffs, but it can't be done by the president and it can't be done under this authority because emergencies, and this is an emergency power piece of legislation, have a beginning and they have an end.
And the Trump administration's tariffs regime. uh were universal tariffs on every nation on earth into perpetuity. That's not what a definition is. And if we called this, if we called trade deficits COVID. And we made the president Biden and not Trump, then Republicans would be jumping up and down, and rightfully so, because they were upset about emergency powers claimed by Biden for student loan debt and climate change.
And Roy Cooper is governor here in North Carolina for keeping schools closed and an 888-day emergency declaration. That's not how emergencies work. They begin and then they end, and that's it. These are extraordinary situations, not just. everyday life.
No question about that. We're talking about the political implications and impacts. Donald, I would find it very hard to believe that the president is going to move off of tariffs. He continually and has said now for years. It is his favorite word in the dictionary.
He loves to say the T-word. Obviously, the administration, there's a couple of other sections that they might be able to look at. We'll, of course, see how that plays out in the months and potentially years to come. Do you anticipate a backtrack from the administration? Or do you think the president and his senior economic advisors are pretty locked in on using tariffs as they've been doing so for almost the past year?
All right, so what I'm going to say now is fairly controversial, so just bear with me, Nick.
Now, I think that this is an indication that President Trump's advisors, and maybe even President Trump, have taken Republican fiscal policy. an economic policy to the left of where it has been in the past. Um, I don't see them backtracking off of tariffs, but also know that for the last 20-30 years, tariffs and On foreign nations and on foreign goods, and reducing the trade deficit has been a mainstay democratic policy. Democrats love this policy. The Democratic Party has talked about it for a long time, and now that it's President Trump doing it, they're suddenly free traders, and I don't believe that of them.
But Republicans have largely agreed with the idea of having free trade with uh free nations I don't think that he's doing himself any political favors. These tariffs have not been. Politically popular, and they will continue to not be politically popular. I think a lot of allies of the president and in the Republican Party are viewing this as a political loss, and it's not. These terrorists have not been popular at all.
You can look at almost any poll that's come out in the past year or since April 2nd of 2025 when he declared Liberation Day. But there was a poll just earlier this month from Marquette University's Law School. That found that 63% of adults in the U.S. think the Supreme Court should uphold a lower court ruling that limits the president's authority to impose these tariffs.
So 63% of voters agree with what happened today. And then, if you go a little further, 57% thought that the Supreme Court was going out of its way to rule against the president, that they had just delayed the ruling long enough, which brings in a question of. Do these people view the Supreme Court as legitimate? This was a constitutional question, and the Supreme Court ruled a particular way.
Well, and I want to ask you about that because there has been a lot of this discussion. We really haven't gotten into too much of it here on the Carolina Journal News Hour, Donald, but this is an authoritarian administration. The Supreme Court is in the pocket of this administration. He can do whatever he wants. I think we saw pretty clearly on Friday that, in fact, no, the president cannot do whatever he wants.
You had multiple conservative, more conservative-leaning justices rule against the president in this 6-3 ruling. To me, that argument is completely out the window. And anybody that makes that point now is just being incredibly dishonest. Yeah, no, I think that's right. And of course, you had three conservatives and the three liberal justices on the court make up the majority in this 6-3 opinion.
I was. Troubled and mystified by the decision or the opinion that was given out by Kavanaugh, Alito, and Thomas, where basically they said, look, The Congress passed this law means the president can do it. They can delegate their authority. But if you read into the final logic of what Kavanaugh is arguing in that dissent, It basically means that Congress can just pass a law, and if they want to, they can delegate all of their powers in Article I to the executive, which of course is just not constitutional. The question is, did Congress have the authority to begin with?
To delegate this authority to the executive. They can't just give away all of their powers. That's not how the Constitution works. And the Supreme Court said no. Donald, what's pretty interesting about this is a lot of what we're talking about, whether we're talking about EPA or some of these other sections, this goes back to tariff law from the 1930s.
We're talking about laws that have been on the books for nearly 90 years. It is interesting now that in late February of 2026, or really more April of 2025, we saw these things pressed for the first time. Overall, it's kind of an interesting experiment. It is. And look, you know, it's very explicit in the Constitution that the power to levy duties, which tariffs or duties, right, goes with Congress.
And every president since 1977 has used IEPA to. To manage trade one way or the other, but it's always under some sort of emergency. It's when Iraq invaded Kuwait. Or Russia annexed Crimea and was threatening Ukraine. The drug cartels were running everything in Colombia, and so we stopped trade with Columbia.
That's the sort of situation this was made for, but not. Every nation In on earth, in perpetuity, I think there, you know, we're not free trade absolutists at the John Locke Foundation. There are reasons to use tariffs or embargoes to get people to change behavior, right? But I don't, and the broader point was to exclude China, right? And make China be a fair actor on the world stage, and they are generally bad actors.
But if you sanction everybody, if you tariff and embargo everybody, then you're not giving anybody any choice but to exclude you out of the situation. And that's really what's become a problem. And so now we're seeing Canada and the UK and EU try to come up with this trading block to figure out. how to move around and have trade outside of the United States. And that's really the problem.
And what we've seen is our trade deficit went down by zero point two percent in twenty twenty five, while China's trade surplus is up over one point two trillion. Donald, let me throw this point at you. And this has been something discussed now going all the way back to even before the Liberation Day stuff in early April of 2025. Donald, you say you're for free trade. You say you're for free markets, but we don't have those because of some of these trade restrictions from other countries.
I know you've seen and heard that argument probably be questioned on that. What do you say to maybe some of our listeners that hold that opinion this morning and say it's not really free when all of these other factors are in place?
Well, no, it's not really free, and there are a lot of factors in place. I think the goal is to have free trade, right? That's what we want and to measure up. But let's not act like the United States trade policy is not to blame, that we don't have, people call them non-trade restrictions or non-tariff barriers to trade. And that includes things like government subsidies of particular industries and things like that.
We have lots of those in the United States, and we should stop them. And also, in terms of tariffs, even before Liberation Day, yes, other countries have tariffs on us, but we have. more tariffs or we had more tariffs. On nations generally around the world than any other nation on earth. We are not.
necessarily free traders. I think that's where we want to go. We want to have free trade with free people. Non free nations we don't really want to have free trade with. That's not who we want to associate on the world stage.
But the easiest thing to do would be to get the government out of the economy and make the government less relevant in our lives.
Well, and you're kind of getting back to the basic fundamentals in all of this. And one of the arguments that I think the administration has going in its favor is some of what we saw in the one big beautiful bill back in July was making business and more friendly, a more friendly environment for businesses and manufacturers to move back to the United States. And Donald, probably the worst example of this is the EPA. I mean, we see an agency that has ballooned in the amount of regulation. You can't dig up a seashell without getting some federal regulator to come in and do a 10-year survey or study on it.
Seems like if the concern is manufacturing and some of these jobs going overseas, we can just eliminate a lot of the bureaucracy and red tape. And by default, those jobs should presumably come swelling back in stateside. Completely agree. Completely agree with that. And some things that the administration has done are great for the economy, and they should continue on that path.
And the things that they've done that are great are things that. shrink the size and scope of government, right? And so things like reforming the tax code, lowering corporate income taxes, making it cheaper and easier through regulatory reform to run a business and have manufacturing in the United States. Those are things we should do. Outside of the economy, and another thing that I called the government on, or the Trump administration on, was their move to dissolve the Department of Education.
Congress needs to act on that, but Trump making that move and setting that up is great. Where are the Republicans in Congress acting on this? That's my question.
So, the moves to shrink government are great. Tariffs were not that. That's just not what they were. This was a tax increase that was done by executive order and not passed by Congress. And that's why I disagreed with it.
But these other things I think would be great in terms of that's what we need to do to onshore manufacturing and get jobs here in America. Donald, you have written a lot about this.
Some of our other fellows at the Locke Foundation have written a lot about this. And presumably, we'll continue once we hear from the administration exactly what their plan is going forward. How can folks stay up to date with that information?
Well, they can check it out at www.johnlockwithane.org. And of course, the Carolina Journal and the Carolina Journal News Hour do a great job of covering the news up to date. Donald, appreciate the information and the insight this morning. The CEO and president of the John Locke Foundation, Donald Bryson, joins us on the Carolina Journal News Hour. One out.
You're still grooving, still connecting, still loving, still turning up, still thriving. You still got it, but your immune system, it weakens as you age. That's where vaccines come in. They help train and strengthen your immune response to fight off respiratory illnesses like flu, pneumococcal pneumonia, RSV, or COVID-19. Ask your doctor or pharmacist which vaccines you need.
Book in minutes at vaxassist.com. Sponsored by Pfizer. Good morning again. It's 5:54. Welcome back to the Carolina Journal News Hour, Charlotte's FM News Talk 107.9 WBT.
North Carolina continues to be a major tech hub across the U.S., with Raleigh, Durham, and Charlotte all ranking in the top 10 for best southern metro cities for tech workers. That industry continues to grow in the South leads as it relates to tech talent and companies beyond traditional tech hubs, places out on the West Coast. The ranking from a company or a group called Commercial Cafe is based on tech company density, establishment growth, job density, and job growth, among many other metrics. Ranking of southern metro cities are below the Mason-Dixon line and have to have a population above 200,000. Raleigh placed third after Austin, Texas, and Washington, D.C., with a notable increase in company growth and employment.
In recent years, Durham placed number seventh after Atlanta, Georgia, and Charlotte ranks ninth after the city of Baltimore, Maryland. While D.C. and Baltimore are below the Mason-Dixon line, they are often categorized geographically and culturally as more mid-Atlantic. If these two were not included, Raleigh would have placed second, Durham sixth, and Charlotte seventh. North Carolina is positioned as a leading tech hub due to a unique combination of skilled workforce and a favorable business environment that has been cultivated over the last 10 or plus years.
Strong research universities, affordable living, diverse talent, and a competitive cost of doing business are all strong motivating factors for tech companies, especially those in the startup realm. Higher quality education creates an environment that is appealing to many of these companies, with the Raleigh-Durham region ranking among the top 10 markets in North Carolina for education attainment, with 51% of adults age 25 and older holding a bachelor's degree or higher. That's according to the Wake County Economic Development Center. And some other, as we continue through this, the UNC systems, research universities, including Chapel Hill, Duke, and some other schools across the state of North Carolina continue to provide North Carolina with this very primed workforce for those working in the tech sector. North Carolina's low corporate income tax also boosts its competitiveness across the other states, I should say, across the country.
With 2.25% corporate tax rate, the state is ranked number one in terms of lowest state and local tax burdens in the United States, according to the North Carolina Department of Commerce. as we continue with this, looking at some research on this. Brian Balfour, who is the senior vice president of research at the John Locke Foundation, said that he's not surprised by this, noting that the rankings reflect the pro-growth policies that North Carolina has implemented over the past dozen years. Our state has been ranked the best state for business three of the last four years, so this high ranking with regards to urban tech growth comes at no surprise. A falling tax burden combined with limited regulations makes North Carolina and its population hubs an attractive destination for investments and job creation.
More coverage of that this morning over on our website, CarolinaJournal.com. That's going to do it for a Monday edition. WBT News is next. Followed by Good Morning BT. We're back for you tomorrow morning, 5-6, right here on Charlotte's FM News Talk, 107.9, WBT.
You're still grooving, still connecting, still loving, still turning up, still thriving. You still got it, but your immune system, it weakens as you age. That's where vaccines come in. They help train and strengthen your immune response to fight off respiratory illnesses like flu, pneumococcal pneumonia, RSV, or COVID-19. Ask your doctor or pharmacist which vaccines you need.
Book in minutes at vaxassist.com. Sponsored by Pfizer. Mm-hmm.
