Well, to be technical, China didnt really pay it.
To be technical, pigs don’t actually fly. That turn of phrase implies that in some way China did pay. THEY DID NOT. American importers paid these tariffs; no one else did.
I’m repeating myself from above because I just can’t wrap my head around this:
And why are consumers saying they want their cut? And why is Bessent claiming it’ll be complicated to repay the tariffs to American businesses?
I mean, we know his supporters are being stupid, but this is just a whole nother level.
Oh, sometimes the exporters did, but not usually.
What does the US Supreme Court's tariff ruling mean for exporters to the US? | Travers Smith).
Its complicated.
I know that. You know that. But Trump has been saying that. So why isn’t he crying about having to pay China back? Why isn’t the left and the media calling that out?
Why is anyone afraid of this bozo?
Continuing a hijack from Trump, seeking executive power over elections, is urged to declare emergency - #51 by steronz in this forum, since the topic changed to Trump’s assertion of tariff power:
I agree this is what he’s saying - Trump is nothing if not an authoritarian - but look at what he’s doing.
He’s not using IEEPA for his tariffs. He’s looking for other ways to get around that and do what he wants - ways that unfortunately are available. He hates the Supreme Court for not recognizing his own personal supremacy over the law, and he’ll get around them any way he legally can, but he hasn’t gotten to the point of Andrew-Jacksoning the court yet, much as he might like to. And he’s not jawboning the Republican-controlled House and Senate into enacting the tariffs he wants legally, because he knows that’s a nonstarter and will end up making him look weaker if he tries it.
Note that I am not saying Donald Trump is not dangerous. He’ll do anything he thinks he might have even the slightest change of getting away with. He cares not for the country, its Constitution or its laws. I’ve been saying for a decade now (not all in this forum) that Donald Trump is the greatest authoritarian threat to America since the founding. It’s utterly disgraceful that the Republican party couldn’t find ten more senators in February 2021 to end the threat of him forever - possibly the worst example of “party over country” and “self over all” in the history of the republic, beyond Trump himself.
But while he still, like a whiny toddler, tries to get what he wants, he’s not outright defying the law to do it.
Thanks for moving the discussion over here, this is a better thread.
It’s true that he hasn’t done it yet, but if he sticks to his announcement he will be doing just that. The other mechanisms available don’t apply to the sweeping tariffs he enacted. Section 232 allows tariffs for national security reasons, which probably covers microprocessors but not, say, beef, and section 301 requires the government to show documented unfair trade practices, like intellectual property theft. There is absolutely no way he can just move all of the existing tariffs to these other mechanisms without them being equally (but differently) illegal. And yet, that’s exactly what he’s said he’s going to do, we have no indication that he doesn’t mean it, and the government is still collecting all of the tariffs under the IEEPA “authority” as of today.
In short, maybe he’ll cave eventually, but at the moment this looks very much like an Andrew-Jacksoning.
And the difference is the key.
The Supreme Court has ruled on the IEEPA, so that avenue is out - any district court in the country not in Amarillo or Fort Pierce is going to rule for an injunction on such a tariff before the ink dries. But if Trump says he’s putting a tariff on, as you say, beef using Section 232, the judicial branch will freeze up for a bit and say “Hmmm, yes, we have to think about this a while, perhaps eating meat is vital to America’s national security.” And so he gets what he wants* while that case is winding its way through the courts, who will actually have to wade through briefs written by a bunch of bullshit-artists-with-J.D.s who now populate the administration.
And then, of course, rinse and repeat for section 301, where the courts have their intelligence and critical thinking skills insulted by arrant nonsense about some engineer who mentioned some trade secret about how to make fidget spinners to his wife and so we have to levy tariffs on the whole world to make up for it.
This is part and parcel of how Trump likes to operate. He knows the courts are slow and limited in what they can prescribe as a remedy, and he has no shame in making the most baldfaced lies possible in order to get what he wants. The big difference between Trump 45 and Trump 47 is that 45 needed the institutional Republican party to staff the executive branch, and the people of that institutional party still had some degree of independence of thought, deed, conscience and self-respect, and they would push back against Trump, who was in over his head and didn’t know who was completely loyal to him personally. That’s gone in the current maladministration, and he can get toadies to do pretty much everything he wants, and fire any holdovers who perform contrary to his will and replace them with more toadies.
One question about what you wrote that I’d need a cite for:
Are U.S. customs agents actually telling people “the Supreme Court’s ruling means nothing and we’re collecting this tariff under IEEPA” right now?
* It’s possible he will not be able to avoid an injunction to halt collections this time since his administration pinky-swore they would be able to reverse improper collection easily the last time, but now they’re saying it’s not possible to do so. But the presumption of regularity is hard to shake, so I’m guessing he gets what he wants until the Supremes slap him down again - probably 5-4 this time. Or maybe they’ll like his bullshit and give him a big win for the unitary executive, once again ignoring the major questions doctrine when a Republican is in the Oval Office.
Initially yes, but I was confused about the timeline and they’ve since stopped. (I saw articles that mentioned Tuesday and assumed that meant they’d collect the tariffs until Mar 3, but they stopped on the 24th, 4 days after the ruling. My bad on that.)
I agree with the rest of your post. I guess whether or not we consider “sending obviously illegal practices to slow moving courts so he can keep doing what he wants” as Andrew Jacksoning is open to debate. It’s certainly not as brazen in execution, but IMO his rhetoric around the decision is enough to make it equivalent.
Trump says “WAAAAAH! I WANT A DOOVER!”
Maybe, if the exporting country actually reduces prices.
In my experience as a manufacturer, that isn’t the case.
It’s the passive-aggressive (or perhaps postmodern?) equivalent to open defiance, and it certainly ends up with the same effect (which is why Trump likes it) but it offers him and the Republican legislators enough of a fig leaf of deniability that they don’t have to confront the implications of it related to the spirit of the law, rather than its letter. Not going to open defiance can make Trump seem like he’s being “reasonable” to the political middle and to low-information voters (where his support is collapsing anyway, but where measures like impeachment and removal are seen to be just as norm-breaking and radical as Trump’s stunts) but his supporters see it as a badge of honor for “continuing to fight” for his lousy policies.
The real danger of Trump’s legal tactics are in terms of things where the courts can’t react quickly enough before he throws over the table and creates a situation where there’s no way that things can be put back the way they were before and no one knows what the truth of the matter is… say, if his ICE goons destroy a bunch of ballots from highly Democratic areas in a district, and the count of the surviving ballots just barely put a Republican over the top - but that would send us back to the other thread, as it is the primary danger of the 2026 elections right now.
This is exactly the playbook of Project 2025. They learned the lessons very well from watching how Trump abused the court system, especially in the last several years. This the way they approach every issue. Put out an executive order and wait for the lawsuits to start. Tie up everything in court indefinitely. Chaos is the goal. Meanwhile, they get what they want.