One of the two major cornerstones of President Trump’s economic agenda just got struck down by a Supreme Court that didn’t seem to buy any of the arguments the government made in support of imposing tariffs on nearly every country. The President is already boasting that he has a backup plan, which was expected, although it’s not clear how it’ll stand up to a strong statement from the courts.
The usage of tariffs by the President has caused chaos for carmakers and some buyers, although the actual direct impacts on consumers have been mostly muted up to this point. Even buying car parts has become more expensive and complicated. There are billions of dollars at stake here just for automakers, as well as dozens of planned manufacturing changes that could affect thousands of workers across the globe.
It’s possible that no one will have a clear idea of the impact of this decision for weeks or even months, owing to both this administration’s contingency plans and the complex calculus companies will have to make in order to balance saving money with placating an unpredictable executive.
All that being said, this Supreme Court has been marked by a lot of decisions that only address issues in a narrow manner, therefore leaving room for more cases and more interpretation. This isn’t one of those decisions. The ruling made it clear that, fundamentally, no President has the authority to do what’s being done.
While the way forward is murky, here are all the ways that I see this playing out for automotive producers and just normal consumers.
Why The President Thought This Was Legal
The general view of this administration seems to be that, if the President does it, it’s legal, and the justification for tariffs that was given in various official documents doesn’t seem to match with President Trump’s own rhetoric.
The Trump Administration has mostly invoked the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977, or IEEPA. What is this law, and why does it exist? Here’s how Congress explains it:
IEEPA empowers the President to exercise an array of economic powers “to deal with any unusual and extraordinary threat, which has its source in whole or substantial part outside the United States, to the national security, foreign policy, or economy of the United States, if the President declares a national emergency with respect to such threat.” The statute provides that the authorities granted by IEEPA to the President “may only be exercised to deal with an unusual and extraordinary threat with respect to which a national emergency has been declared for purposes of this chapter [i.e., IEEPA] and may not be exercised for any other purpose.” Each “new threat” for which IEEPA is invoked requires a new declaration.
What was the threat? Primarily, President Trump cites the fentanyl drug crisis:
I, DONALD J. TRUMP, President of the United States of America, find that the sustained influx of illicit opioids and other drugs has profound consequences on our Nation, endangering lives and putting a severe strain on our healthcare system, public services, and communities.
This challenge threatens the fabric of our society. Gang members, smugglers, human traffickers, and illicit drugs of all kinds have poured across our borders and into our communities. Canada has played a central role in these challenges, including by failing to devote sufficient attention and resources or meaningfully coordinate with United States law enforcement partners to effectively stem the tide of illicit drugs.
The fact that many of the countries that were tariffed are highly unlikely to be involved at all in the very real fentanyl drug crisis doesn’t seem to matter. The President himself rarely mentioned it, instead focusing on the balance of trade between companies. The announcement of tariffs even came on what he called “Liberation Day” for the country.
As he said when he announced the tariffs:
And for many years and decades, even, you didn’t hear too much about. Our country and its taxpayers have been ripped off for more than 50 years, but it is not going to happen anymore. It’s not going to happen. In a few moments, I will sign a historic executive order instituting reciprocal tariffs on countries throughout the world, reciprocal.
That means they do it to us and we do it to them, very simple, can’t get any simpler than that. This is one of the most important days, in my opinion, in American history. It’s our declaration of economic independence. For years, hardworking American citizens were forced to sit on the sidelines as other nations got rich and powerful, much of it at our expense, but now it’s our turn to prosper.
None of that really has anything to do with drugs, and if the court merely stated that the reasoning was faulty, then it’s possible the Trump administration could have just changed its reasoning. That’s not what happened.
The Supreme Court Says This Is Broadly Unconstitutional
In a 6-3 ruling, the Supreme Court held that the White House’s tariffs were unconstitutional. Not only that, the ruling seems to be designed to counter a lot of future moves from the White House to get around it. You can read the full thing here. Chief Justice Roberts is quite clear here:
Article I, Section 8, of the Constitution specifies that “The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises.” The Framers recognized the unique importance of this taxing power—a power which “very clear[ly]” includes the power to impose tariffs. Gibbons v. Ogden, 9 Wheat. 1, 201. And they gave Congress “alone . . . access to the pockets of the people.” The Federalist No. 48, p. 310 (J. Madison). The Framers did not vest any part of the taxing power in the Executive Branch. See Nicol v. Ames, 173 U. S. 509, 515. The Government thus concedes that the President enjoys no inherent authority to impose tariffs during peacetime. It instead relies exclusively on IEEPA to defend the challenged tariffs. It reads the words “regulate” and “importation” to effect a sweeping delegation of Congress’s power to set tariff policy—authorizing the President to impose tariffs of unlimited amount and duration, on any product from any country. 50 U. S. C. §1702(a)(1)(B). Pp. 5–7.
If you’re the Executive Branch, the invocation of Fed 48 is pretty much a door slamming in your face. Justices Barrett and Gorsuch join the Chief Justice and go even further:
There is no exception to the major questions doctrine for emergency statutes. Nor does the fact that tariffs implicate foreign affairs render the doctrine inapplicable. The Framers gave “Congress alone” the power to impose tariffs during peacetime. Merritt v. Welsh, (104 U. S. 694, 700). And the foreign affairs implications of tariffs do not make it any more likely that Congress would relinquish its tariff power through vague language, or without careful limits. Accordingly, the President must “point to clear congressional authorization” to justify his extraordinary assertion of that power. Nebraska, 600 U. S., at 506 (internal quotation marks omitted). He cannot.
There is no war. There is no emergency. If the President wants to invoke tariffs, he needs to ask Congress, and there’s basically no way this Congress is going to give him that power. I will say, with the President threatening war against Iran, the chance of it no longer being peacetime is a possibility.
Both the liberal and conservative justices on the court issued their own opinions on the matter, with a predictably wide variance in interpretation.
Can The White House Try Other Ways To Prop Up Tariffs?
There are a lot of potential ways for any President to invoke tariffs, although most of these are limited in various ways and don’t, from my view, clear the basic hurdle as laid out by the Supreme Court in its decision. Bloomberg lays them all out in this article, but the one I’m most curious about is Section 338 of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930:
The Depression-era provision empowers the president to introduce tariffs on imports from nations “whenever he shall find as a fact” that these countries impose unreasonable charges or limitations, or engage in discriminatory behavior against US commerce.
There’s no prerequisite for a federal agency to conduct an investigation before the president can apply tariffs.
No President has ever used Section 338, and it would be immediately challenged in the courts.
The challenge for the Trump administration is that almost every next step was designed by Congress to be limited in time and scope. Rather than just place limits on various countries, most alternative provisions are industry-by-industry, country-by-country, or even commodity-by-commodity.
Will Automakers Get Their Money Back? Consumers?
Here’s where it gets super unclear and crazy. The government has collected billions and billions of dollars in tariffs, both from automakers and from anyone who has purchased almost anything from abroad. When Mercedes imported her car from Japan, she paid a tariff. When you bought a part from Europe, potentially, you paid a tariff.
Do you get that money back? Do businesses? Senator Elizabeth Warren is calling for some form of refund, stating that “The American people paid for these tariffs and the American people should get their money back.”
For individuals, it’s not clear yet how this will work. For carmakers, it’s much easier, given that many of them have already sued the Trump administration in the hopes that a Supreme Court reversal would allow them to get cash back.
In the interim, at least, I don’t see automakers passing on more tariff costs to consumers beyond what they already have until this gets further resolved.
Will Companies Stop Investing In The United States?
This one is the trickiest question of all. On one level, the various bilateral trade agreements made between the Trump administration and certain countries are beneficial to both. The President is also unpredictable, and big trade partners like Mexico, Canada, South Korea, and Japan seem willing to play ball.
On another level, most of these agreements aren’t truly final, and the President just lost a ton of leverage. As Senator Bernie Moreno said on X:
SCOTUS’s outrageous ruling handcuffs our fight against unfair trade that has devastated American workers for decades. These tariffs protected jobs, revived manufacturing, and forced cheaters like China to pay up. Now globalists win, factories investments may reverse, and American workers lose again. This betrayal must be reversed and Republicans must get to work immediately on a reconciliation bill to codify the tariffs that had made our country the hottest country on earth!
This seems alarmist to me, and after deciding to shift more production to the United States, I don’t see most companies changing those plans immediately. Will it slow some of them down? Probably. I’d also argue that many of these plans announced by automakers were already planned, and merely highlighted to appease the President.
Either way, the President’s choices seem to be either to be more limited in his approach to tariffs or try a Hail Mary pass using an almost 100-year-old law that previously contributed to the Great Depression. It’s also possible that the President just gives up his tariff plans. Or declare war on everyone, although, come to think of it, that’s something that Congress is also supposed to do.
Top photo: The White House
lol and where is that refund money going to come from
A bunch of speculators already bought the interest in it at a fraction of the value, so whatever refund is to be had will just go into the pockets of the ghoul class. As usual for America, a cutthroat profiteers will scoop it all up while everything continues to get worse for everyone else.
Which is honestly pretty amazing. There is no limit to a speculator’s imagination when it comes to inventing new vehicles to make money.
I know that Howard Nutlick was one of the guys behind the buy-up.
What amazing name, if real.
Crypto profits…
We have to return all the checks we received from ill douchebag. Oh wait they never existed. Perhaps all the funds used for ICE? and not the engine variety
Considering the Supreme Court is stacked with puppets I was downright shocked to hear about this. Apparently the puppets were getting real pissy about everyone correctly pointing out that they’ve basically been Trump’s personal attorneys for years, so maybe this was some sort of retribution? I don’t know. I’m happy it happened and find it deeply hilarious that the demented orange can’t even win with a kangaroo court…but I’m also worried about what could come next.
They’re very much setting the machinations in place to try to steal the midterms, we’re about ready to go to war with Iran, the administration and tech overlords who fund them are basically using law enforcement as their own personal gestapo, the AI bubble is finally about to pop…shit’s about to get a lot uglier and democracy is at stake. Stay safe out there, comrades.
Oh and the president’s a pedophile. Can’t forget that!
The Trump-Epstein Files.
Trumpstein :tm:
I challenge you to actually read their opinion pieces on a variety of their cases, as well as the SCOTUS blog.
Most of them are genuinely impressive legal scholars and are appropriately at the top of their game, so to speak (admittedly they also have a small flock of helpers).
A couple of them are weak tea that dare not set a toe outside of the party line and do not deviate from what they’ve been programmed to do, which is a pity but at least makes them predictable.
Thankfully we have an odd number of seats on the bench.
Hopefully the weak ones retire very soon, since they seem unwilling to channel the perspectives and energies of their recent predecessors rbg and Scalia and use their brains to actually think, and even cross the (ever fluid) party lines in the interest of Justice.
I worry about replacement judges.
That’s a reasonable worry.
I’m sitting here waiting for his press conference to start. Apparently he totally lost it on Fox, started cursing out the Supreme Court and throwing a tantrum. They cut and pulled it from the air.
We all know what will happen: He will LOSE IT on the press conference. He will blame it all on someone else.
At this point polls show he has lost support from WHITE MALES. Yup- the only demographic that still stubbornly was supporting. He is fucked. The GOP is fucked. A lot of them KNOW they will go to federal prison. And that is why they are running like rats and panicking.
The problem is that they tried to run the whole thing like a country where its citizens had almost always known oppression and poverty. Like you can’t do a turbo speedrun of Despotism and expect no pushback from everyone. The white guys hung with him until almost the very end, though, it must be said.
“The white guys hung with him until almost the very end, though, it must be said.”
Funny that the movie Downfall was based on the book Until the Final Hour by Traudl Junge.
[REDACTED]
I’m told we don’t do that here.
We don’t do blood clots? That’s good!
May we all love something as much as DJT seemingly loved tariffs. Gone, but not forgotten Liberation Day(s) April 2nd 2025-February 20th 2026.
Maybe Liberation Day can get a national day of remembrance, perhaps a holiday every year on the day before its inception.
In no world will this cost him meaningful support amount white males. You cost him support by offering a better vision, not by hoping that he blunders. He’s shown that no amount of blundering matters.
The only vision many of his supporters have, involves a white male dominated country where they can be cruelly vindictive toward everyone who disagrees with them. He openly sells that, which is why no amount of moronic blunders can dissuade his core supporters.
I hope you are right. I see war, extreme violence, extermination camps, total dictatorship, loss of rule of law, mass deportations, and never any accountability. I hope I am wrong.
“He is fucked. The GOP is fucked. A lot of them KNOW they will go to federal prison. And that is why they are running like rats and panicking.” – I really hope this is an understatement, and the future reality is far worse for everyone involved.
They won’t go to prison unless he has the good grace to die before he blanket pardons all of them ala the Jan 6 insurrectionists. Though you KNOW he is now holding that over anyone involved in his nonsense heads.
Or charges are filed after his term is up…
As I said, if he makes it to the end, guaranteed he blanket pardons all of them on his way out the door. They all must be damned scared of him croaking before that happens.
Honestly, given what a slimeball Vance is, I can’t believe he isn’t trying every which way to get the Cabinet and Congress to Section 25 Trump and make himself President. It’s the only way he will every hold that office.
My point is, if there are no charges filed while he is president, there is no way to pardon anyone. I know there have been… discussions about issuing preemptive pardons for charges pending or something similar but from what I’ve read that won’t hold up.
The next guy or gal that comes in can set the justice department loose. Nothing Trump can do at that point.
Sounds like you need to google “preemptive pardon”. They’re real, and they’re
spectaculara disgrace.Completely wrong. Preemptive pardons are very much a thing. Biden did it for his family and inner circle to protect them from Trump (and rightly so). Gerald Ford preemptively pardoned Richard Nixon after he resigned to protect him from being prosecuted for Watergate.
They should not be a thing, for that matter IMHO the President’s solo power to pardon with no oversight is one of the Founder’s biggest blunders. But as I said, they were honorable men and never envisioned a deplorable like Trump becoming President.
Here is a good overview on the subject:
https://www.criminallawlibraryblog.com/preemptive-pardons-constitutional-authority-and-real-world-implications/
I’d very much prefer Vance as PotUS. The current PotUS is very overdue for retirement.
Anecdotally, in the Catholic Church, Cardinals are required to submit their resignation when they reach the age of 75. That seems a fine maximum age for public service. Maybe we should take a hint from the Church and implement that for our politicians.
I despise Vance – but he’s not a senile malignant narcissist, so I too would prefer to take my chances with him in the Oval Office.
The last time I said my opinion of what need to happen to Trump here, the powers that be here chastised me privately, so I shall hold my tongue on that.
I wish you could but understandable.
I wish I could be as non-negative about Vance. Christian nationalism isn’t far removed from national socialism, if you get my drift.
Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing at all I like about Vance – I just think in this case he’s the lesser evil. Still very evil though. Predictable evil has to be better than random evil, and he’s not so corupt as Trump – he doesn’t have nearly so many ways to funnel taxpayer money into his own pockets.
Vance isn’t senile, so he could be worse. Trump could resign at some point, giving Vance the potential to serve ten years as President.
Consistent, predictable, evil is easier to counter than random evil. Or at least a lot less chaotic.
He also has the charisma of a moldy paper bag. He will NEVER win a national election, nor inspire people to follow him no matter what the way Trump has in the past.
And in this country the political pendulum swings right-left-right-left very predictably. The only exception in my lifetime (I was born during Nixon’s 1st term) is Bush I riding Reagan’s coattails for one term. Trump is no Ronnie Ray Gun. Reagan was one of the most popular Presidents in modern times, the polar opposite of Trump. I am VERY confident that the ONLY way Vance will ever be President is if Trump dies or is removed, and he has zero chances of winning re-election.
As polarizing as #47 had been, I’m OK with #48 having the personality of a wet paper bag, as long as they’re not weak and give a crap about doing the job properly.
The trouble is, you need enough personality to first win a primary, then to win the election itself. Which when you think about it is a hell of a task. You have to be able to convince the party faithful, THEN convince enough of the middle that you aren’t the anti-Christ.
It’s a crazy system we have in this country.
I’d personally like to see it get to where the middle 80% of the country rejects both main parties’ candidates. A massive write-in vote occurs and/or an independent (lowercase I) centrist wins the popular vote. The same candidate then gains just enough electoral college votes to prevent any one candidate from getting the required majority of EC votes. The popular vote then determines the winner. I recognize that’s generally impossible seeing as how electoral college members are selected, but it’d still be fun to see.
In the same fantasy I dream about a day when we have 5+ equally-powerful political parties that better represent the contemporary political spectrum. Bipartisanship isn’t doing us any favors.
I would love an Independent President, but that is very much a recipe for getting absolutely nothing accomplished, as BOTH parties in Congress would make it a mission to make that so.
It can’t work until we have multiple real political parties, and that is not happening any time soon. Coalition governments are a good thing.
Pilots have a mandatory retirement age of 65. That is a good age for congress, the president, and federal judges.
Some cool news is that the Supreme Court decided that a president cannot commit a crime as long as it’s an official act, so all his successor has to do is round up all Trump’s people and throw them in the dungeon “officially”. Very easy.
The trouble is, his successor will almost certainly not be Trump 2.0, so will actually follow the law. And even if he or she did try to round them up against a Presidential pardon, the courts will, eventually, let them go. This slope is not nearly as slippery as people like to think it is, even if “justice” can take a very long time to work it’s way through the system.
And there is zero chance that any court is going to overturn a Presidential pardon until the Constitution is changed. There is literally no mechanism in US law to do that. Unfortunately, the Founders were honorable men who never in their wildest nightmares foresaw the combination of factors that got us to Donald Trump. But even now, checks and balances ARE working, albeit far slower than any of us want. Today’s ruling is still more evidence of that.
Presidential pardons are federal, so hopefully the states will pick up the slack.
The trouble is that most of them likely haven’t broken any state laws. For that matter, for MOST of the cabinet, unfortunately immorality and incompetence isn’t actually illegal.
He’s got a SOTU address on the 24th. There’s no way that doesn’t turn into a complete cluster of fornication.
Cluster of Fornication is genius. Also a great name for a band.
Looking forward to THAT shit show.
I fear we are headed to a constitutional crisis. Trump has built his entire second term on tariffs. His options seem to be:
Option 1 seems highly unlikely. Option 3 seems to be basically impossible based on what I think I know about the man.
So that leads to Option 2. What does the Supreme Court do if the president ignores them? Does Congress have some sort of role in controlling a president that isn’t listening to the courts?
I thought all the constitutional crisis thing were solved by 1870, but I guess I’m wrong.
I think we’re already in a constitutional crisis with Trump and co. ignoring countless court orders and getting away with it, but optimistic me says this is a bit different because this is very public and he’s going up against large corporations.
Up until this point, corporations had to play along since they can’t break the law without consequences regardless of how ridiculous the law was (unlike Trump who does so with no risk of enforcement, especially now that he’s hanging banners with his face on them on the enforcement arm of the govt at the DoJ).
Now, though, they can just not pay the tariffs because they’re unconstitutional. The Supreme Court has given them permission to ignore this “law”. Sure, Trump can send enforcement after them for not paying, but that will be an awfully short court case that companies will be sure to make as painful as possible for Trump.
Don John Un will not make it through this term, and I think he knows that, so he’s doing everything he can to secure his legacy. Also, he knows as long as he can keep the office, he’s got immunity. The moment that he becomes Little People, he’s toast. So, he’ll probably die before giving up office.
DJT’s legacy is quite secure. The worst President the Republic has ever endured. He and his circus will never be forgotten, so at least he has that. I mean we all remember the Titanic and that turned out to be a total merdeshow
I think the Constitutional Crisis is a feature of this admin, not a bug.
Both times he has been in office, Trump has scoffed at the rule of law, abused his position, and bullied the branches of government that were supposed to keep him in check.
That’s his whole schtick: just blast through whatever decorum or moral or ethical guardrails might be in place, ignore and manipulate law when it doesn’t suit him, and BREAK the government. That way, he can claim that everything is terrible, and only he can fix it.
The Framers of the Constitution knew that it would be tested at some point. They could never have foreseen the extend that corruption would twist and distort the intent of the document they had so carefully created.
They also knew that it would need to be updated from time to time. If we ever rid ourselves of the MAGA plague, there will be big changes to the Constitution to prevent this from ever happening again.
But we have to get MAGA out of our government first.
I don’t think I would say that they didn’t foresee what could happen. They had lived it with a king that went insane.
“A republic, if you can keep it” Ben Franklin
“Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, hey have more need of masters.” Thomas Jefferson.
There are a lot of quotes of the Founding Fathers warning about how that the guardrails of the government they created would be worthless if the people are corrupt.
Rather than getting rid of MAGA, our efforts would be much better spent forming and shaping more strong political parties, so that it’s no longer an “us versus them” mentality, and that the numerous equally-strong political parties better represent modern American citizen constituents. Bipartisanship is broken on both sides, and it’s doing nobody any favors, save the oligarchs that are profiting visibly and invisibly.
Long-term, I agree with you. Short-term, we must prevent the TRump-aligned GOP from gaining a decades-long authoritarian foothold (for which they are laying the foundation).
I think we definitely need to prevent any particular entity from having authoritarian anything. It tickles me to no end that folks thought that the SCOTUS would be #47’s personal attack dog and defense mechanism, when instead they’re doing exactly as they’re intended to do.
I have ZERO faith that they have good intentions.
They were put on the spot, with a case that was clearly spelled out. They really had no choice but to go that way.
As for working exactly the way they’re intended to, yeah, we watched this court give Trump absolute immunity in his first term. This is exactly what he installed them for.
The constitution fetishism in America really is something else. It was a brilliant document written at a very different time, with very different mores, population dynamics, etc. It was written by privileged white Anglo men, and it shows, even though they were mostly honourable and visionary.
Countries the world over amend or rewrite their constitutions regularly to reflect a changing world. The US would be well inspired to drop the idolatry.
The U. S. Constitution is a living document. It does get amended. It’s almost constantly challenged. It’s one heck of a political document, right up there with the Magna Carta, the French Declaration on the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, etc.
The last amendment was 34 years ago.
That’s pretty good then. What changes do you think need to be made to it? After all it’s merely the country’s supreme law of the land, not one for federal and state laws themselves, which are ever-changing.
Getting rid of the electoral college would be a good start.
Campaign finance reform with clear caps on contributions from companies and individuals. (followed by a clear statement that corporations are not people and do not have the rights of people)
I’m not yet sold on getting rid of the EC. We’re a constitutional republic, after all, not a straight democracy. I’m in favor of heavily revamping it, though, starting with having the constituents elect their own EC voters, rather than have them established by the political parties.
I’d also like to explore the numbers behind it so that states with massive populations don’t necessarily have souch more power than states with lower populations. I’m not saying RI, DE, or WY should have the same voting power as CA, TX, or NY, for instance, but there needs to be a bit better balance. Of course, breaking those heavily-populated (even overpopulated) states into multiple smaller states might be an easier method, but that’s a different conversation.
Small states already have an outsized say in national politics due to the Senate. The Senate gives TX and WY exactly the same voting power.
For President, the easiest way for voters to vote directly for their own elector is to have that elector be their Senator or House Member and require that person to vote for the presidential candidate that won their district. No reason to have a separate group of people go and vote for President. As to parties selecting electors – that won’t change. If electors are selected directly be people then parties organize for that vote just like they do for every other vote – including current elections that are supposedly independent.
We also need more Senators and House members. We stopped adding house members in 1913 because the chamber ran out of room. Back then a House member represented on average 224K people. Today the average is 727K or more than 3x as many. Take each house district and make it a multi member district with 3 reps. Increase Senators to 3 and make that a multi-member state wide vote as well.
The multi-member district not only breaks the power of gerrymandering but it also breaks the 2 party lock on power and opens the field for 3rd parties.
All dreams of course – the 2 parties have no interest in making voting more representative and functional.
Good. Now maybe the Australian made part I need for my 20 year old Seadoo will be a little cheaper. Literally nobody else in the world makes it now besides that one machine shop in Oz.
IIRC Costco said they’ll refund customers once they get refunded. This is what should happen. It won’t because privatize the profits and socialize the losses, amirite? (Last sentence was snark)
Poor one out for James Madison. Hero of the automotive supply chain! Huzzah!
Poor, pore, pour.
…pitiful us.
Now I have to go listen to some Zevon.
“Bring lawyers, guns, and money…”
“Justice delayed is justice denied”
I want to be hopeful at this, but I can’t shake the feeling that these being struck down is just going to kick off a new and different shitstorm while not undoing any of the damage already done.
On the one hand, our Supreme Court upheld the law. Which is very nice. On the other hand, you’re right.
I ran into a guy who works for him, Pete something. Said it was totally cool, don’t worry about any possible global destabilizations.
I described Trump’s governing style years ago with a basketball adage, “Foul early, foul often. They can’t call them all.”
Much of the damage is permanent. The destroyed global relationships, the existing trade deals, the goodwill is gone for good. Some of it will be restored, but on a strict COD basis.
The countless small businesses that have gone bankrupt or are currently in the claws of predatory lenders aren’t going to simply reappear or heal overnight. A functioning government with people’s interests in mind could take care of that, but that isn’t gonna happen (even if the Democrats were to take over, to be honest).
The Democrats have been completely spineless, with the exception of a small handful. It is rather pathetic and I’m worried they won’t have a sensible and attractive platform to run on. There are so many possibilities, but so many are beholden to their monied supporters. My own representative was in the pocket of pharma for decades.
To paraphrase Admiral Halsey, the only good tariff is a dead tariff.
Replace “tariff” with “Republican” and it still works!
C’mon Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger are pretty alright.
Exceptions granted.
Senator Moreno should read the decision handed down. Congress is completely capable, and constitionally directed to, manage tariffs. The fact that the White House decided to end run the constitution says everything.
Indeed. Moreno’s comment shows that the GOP expected the SCOTUS to just rubber stamp what the president wants. Sad.
Moreno is too busy trying to figure out how he can charge everyone in the country $999 per year for nitrogen fill in their tires
I just want to point out that before he became a Senator, Bernie Moreno was busted for screwing the American workers he cares so deeply about out of overtime pay.
Thank you Hardigree for helping us make sense of the senseless.
The damage has been done – this court ruling does not fix it.
Innumerable US small businesses, jobs, family wealth and security have been lost forever because of this. Refunds are not assured, and would take months if not years to process if we had a functioning bureaucracy and a well-funded treasury – which we do not.
Meanwhile, nobody with a functioning brain and a modicum of ethics outside the US wants to continue or increase business investments in the USA because we’ve proven ourselves to be untrustworthy, capricious and greedy.
Just like the [REDACTED] in charge, whose only thought of why he believes he has the authority to impose tariffs is not because of some legal analysis which he is incapable of reading – but merely “Because I’m the President and I want to.”
Yeah, but some well-connected grifters made a fuckton of money short selling, so it’s all good, right? Right??
Is there any way to calculate the loss to the individual? I mean, yeah GM or whoever paid a bunch in tariffs. Great, refund it. But they definitely passed that cost onto the consumer. But how much? Apply that logic to every single item that was imported.
There is zero change of the individual seeing any refund.
I paid a $38 tariff on a steel wheel for my Caldina a month ago; perhaps that one is cut and dry enough.
Tariffs cost me a $10,000 bonus when they absolutely destroyed our Return on Sales. So there is one very direct individual calculation.
As soon as I heard about the ruling this morning I was wondering how it would affect cars and wondered what Hardigree had to say about it. Thanks!
I vote that the billions of dollars in refunds come from trump’s personal finances. I don’t even care if I don’t see a penny of it, and it all goes into corporate profits, make him pay personally.
He is actively funneling taxpayer money into his pockets as it is, so it would only be right to repatriate those funds, plus penalties, as the IRS will do to any other citizen. Everything is corrupt, from the non-existent Trump Presidential library taking a half-billion dollar jet from the Qatar royal family, Board of Peace which has it’s funds controlled by the board consisting of Trump at the top, Marco Rubio, and Jared Kushner as Board Execs getting 10B from the US, Lawsuits against the IRS by Trump for billions, and Trump now trademarking the DJT International airport as Florida wants to change one airport to that, paying Trump licensing fees from the taxpayer coffers. Not to mention the trump NFTs, Crypto coins, and blatant bribe that was the Melania movie.
The Trump family rot has encroached into every single avenue of finance and politics as shown by the Epstein files, he is everywhere, sucking value from his base which is too blind to see what is going on. Until every dollar is returned with interest and every criminal jailed, no justice will be enough.
The Trump family has profited off the presidency by nearly $4B this term so far.
I work with construction managers who won’t even accept a cup of coffee from a street vendor.
I’d have been swimming in money, Scrooge McDuck style, if I were blessed with zero sense of decency.
That struck a cord, yes absolutely.
That would be justice indeed, hopefully a $100+ billion tariff refund fee + everything you list would leave them all with way less than absolutely nothing, and we’d never have to hear about any of them again.
The last year has truly made me comprehend why the guillotine was invented. It doesn’t even seem particularly drastic anymore.
I was just remembering being in a museum in the harbor of Marseilles and they had one on display. The French knew what to do with the oligarchs and the Trump-Epstein class of out to touch uber wealthy.
Could you please post this again so that I could like it again? I really want to like this more than once.
No more TACO trade? Now excuse me, its time for me to get real tacos for lunch.
And now come the endless lawsuits to claw back the tariffs. [REDACTED, WE DON’T DO THAT HERE]
Don’t do what? [REDACTED, PLACED IN REDACTION FILE]
And speaking of redactions….. Haha! Release the (unredacted) files.
Yeah, we don’t wish for the death of other people on this website.
The implications remain to be seen, but I am 1000% gobsmacked that SCOTUS did its job.
2/3 of it did anyway. I’m actually kinda surpised that Justice Kegstand went along with the lackeys. I thought it was going to be a 7-2 decision.
What it’s going to do is create a pricing vaccum that corporations will be happy to fill by just increasing price by the amount of the now-removed tariffs. Because god forbid anything gets less expensive.
The justification will be the lost profits due to the sales that DIDN’T happen because of the price increases due to the tariffs. Gotta re-gild that golden parachute for the CEO somehow…
Ahh liberation day
I think I need a libation day.
lol same
Not until the orange fat fucker is no longer president.
Well yeah, I fear that the removal of tariffs (ironically) will actually be good for prices and business and thus his presidency. If we learned anything from the last election it’s that the average low information voter is willing to overlook any number of morally and societally corrupting policies and politics if the economy seems promising in the short term.
Things improve: “I did that”
Things get worse: “It was someone else’s fault”
Sigh, nailed it
Hmmm my guess is a complete S–tshow for the next 6 to 9 months which will make November 2026 even more interesting than it already seems it will be.
or 6 feet below a lawn somewhere
Just have to say, as an Ohioan, Bernie Moreno is an embarrassment to us and the country.
GOP accusing others of cheating is so so rich.
Also, since when is being a globalist negative? Who wants to restrict his market reach within national borders?
As a Floridian, I sympathize.
“Why The President Thought This Was Legal”
I’m guessing he neither knew nor cared whether it was legal. The general approach is “I want, so I do, then I’ll lie, then I’ll sue”.
His followers, on the other hand, thought it was legal because they don’t know anything about any of it.
He’s like if a sov cit were elevated to the highest position on earth.
No need to insult sov cits. They believe in a set of rules, no matter how ridiculous they are. Trump is just breaking the law because he thinks nobody will stop him, and if they do stop him, like in this case, there aren’t consequences, so he’ll just do it again.
I love it and will use it, Plaid Seats’ reasonable objections notwithstanding.
Everyone is Libertarian as a toddler. Most people grow out of it.
Sovereign Citizens are stunted.
Trump is a poster child for entitlement, greed, and (at the root of it all) self-loathing. But now he’s got the keys and he’s committed to driving us all off the cliff to prove his point… if he only knew what his point was.
The so-called Libertarians I know are ‘funny.’ Both of them spent a good fraction or all of their careers in academia, funded in good measure by our tax dollars.
Trump may not know what his point is, but the oligarchs behind him would be quite happy with a societal collapse and the implementation of martial law, end of all regulations, and super-surveillance.
This is exactly right. The entirety of this administration is built on a policy of flooding the zone, implementing that are blatantly illegal and would otherwise be fought, but in volumes so large the system is overwhelmed. It is an arrogant, headstrong, and reckless attitude of “I do what I want and cry foul when challenged.” Every single action is taken based on ideology alone, with paper thin legal “justification” thrown into court to attempt to prop up the shenanigans. All while blatantly funneling taxpayer money into the pockets of the presidents family.
And as the senator from Ohio showed us in his Tweet, people refuse to challenge the rhetoric of the regime, and bend the knee at a moments notice.
They wrote a completely game plan before the election so it shouldn’t be a surprise.
He probably has that embroidered on a pillow. In gold thread, of course.
Politics are famously the art of the possible, but the edges of US politics are looking more like domestic lawfare than politics.
Best news of the week! This proves that if you want to be taken seriously as a country and trade partner, you should stand by the contracts that you signed with your trade partners and recognize them as equal in the relationship.
The loophole doesn’t sound good.
Technically, Congress is supposed to be involved in that, too.
And yet they have not declared war in 84 years! Hooray world peace!
Congress really loves outsourcing parts of their job to the executive branch so they can focus on important things, like finding ways to insert more personal pork barrel projects into unrelated bills and holding endless, costly “investigations” that are really just opportunities for presidential hopefuls to mug and yell in front of cameras, but which don’t produce any meaningful results or consequences
President Pedo’s personal supreme court says President Pedo’s tariffs are unlawful. MAGAts everywhere will have a tough time spinning this one.
Small win to help us claw back some of what is left of democracy.