With the trade “deals” he made with the EU and Japan, he’s claiming they both gave him about $600 billion that he can “invest any way he wants”, so added up, that would be $1.2 trillion.
Of course, he doesn’t understand what was actually offered, and that those “investments” are mostly vaporware, and that even if some people in the EU or Japan take advantage of the new opportunities to invest in the US, they won’t let Trump dictate where those investments go. But lucky for him, the MAGAs don’t understand any of that either, so it looks good to them.
The fact this decision was not unanimous makes me think the Supremes will overturn it and go Trumps way on it. Especially as they know congress likely wont pass any motion to approve tariffs now that they’ve already experienced the backlash over it.
I saw a social media post - from the actual White House - claiming that they’ve collected $8 trillion in tariff revenue, so any discussion of reality is wishful thinking.
The subtext adds that Trump’s policies have also supposedly driven “more than $8 trillion in new U.S. investment”, which is equally unlikely. And what a coincidence that the “new investment” figure exactly matches the amount of revenue collected by tariffs!
But I suppose it’s not hard to equate two equally imaginary figures.
Yeah, they’re adding up every “promised” investment in the US from deals with the EU and Japan, and just ignoring the fact that’s been talked about, that these investments are mostly vaporware, and may never actually occur, and almost certainly won’t reach the levels discussed. These are upper limits on new investments that the other countries will allow under the new rules, and there’s no reason to think they’ll actually hit those limits.
But as to the “struck down” point, we still have to see what the Supreme Court says.
So far, they’ve been fairly amenable to the relatively thin arguments that the administration gives and relatively opposed to the conservative/libertarian judicial history that they’re overriding. That said, overturning meritocracy in favor of a return to the spoils system is, legally, a much lighter lift than many of the other things that Trump is going to find himself in front of the court, over.
But they could certainly decide to continue backing Trump and say something like that it’s ultimately Congress’ job to decide what does and doesn’t constitute an emergency. If Congress hasn’t issued any objections to the President’s use of emergency powers, then it must really be an emergency.
There’s also the issue of “infinite retries”. As I’ve noted elsewhere, I’d like to see a mechanism introduced, through an amendment, that penalizes those who abuse the law or use tortured readings to enable corrupt and partisan policies. But, until that day, all it takes is for the AG to issue some bizarro interpretation of one of all the laws ever passed, to enable some new attempt to forgive student loans, to allow the torture of foreign terrorists, or to allow the president to impose tariffs.
A negative Supreme Court decision just means that you move to the next legal misreading on the list. Bondi and friends may already have a backlist of a half dozen alternatives.
I lack the acumen to be an elected DEM House/Senate representative
But isn’t there some milage to be gained by the DEMs getting on the stump saying that if the White House are claiming USD8 trillion in tariff receipts (year to date) that they have imposed USD8 trillion (year to date) in additional taxes on the US business & consumers?
Or if it is actually the exporter who pays the tariff and prices (inflation) have not increased as a consequence … where is all that cash and what are you going to do with it?
There was a report out a month or two ago, giving the total amount of tariffs that had been collected so far (I think a number in the low billions). From that, you can calculate a ballpark inflationary impact. I.e. if you divide by the number of months that the tariffs have been in place and then divide by the population count of the country, then that’s how much more money Americans are spending in a month, because of the tariffs.
And, if we’re talking “impact” then that really is the calculation.
There’s other things that come into it - like whether people stop buying so much stuff, which has a deflationary impact, and that many of the tariffs will be paid by businesses and that they might not pass on the cost of that to consumers for many months - so the actual inflation value might not follow the impact value, but it does genuinely have that much impact.
And of course, if that happens, it means the business is less profitable, which means no raises, no new hires, lowered stock values, less money for routine maintenance, so shit just slowly gets worse all around.
One thing that I wonder is, if the tariffs all do ultimately end up to be invalid, then the US government basically came in and outright stole a bunch of money from a wide swathe of the American public.
Does that mean a class action suit to try and get all the money back?
In general, if the President’s whole plan to use emergencies and executive orders to subvert the law and the power of Congress fails, I feel like that basically turns him into the largest lame duck president in all of history.
I mean, it certainly seems unlikely that he’s going to be able to move a pro-tariff policy or an immigration policy rewrite through Congress. Minus rule by fiat, he’s left with the need to negotiate and persuade.
So far as I’ve ever seen, Trump’s only ability to negotiate rests on inheriting a power structure built by someone more competent, and abusing that power. And while that probably works initially, over the over term it drives away serious and powerful partners as they successfully extricate themselves from the connection, and then you’re left trying to prop up a failing organization through fraud and usurious loans.
In general, I’m not optimistic that he’ll somehow get Congress to change its mind on trashing the economy of the land that they live and have most of their investments in.
So, suddenly, he turns from a Big Guy making Big Talk and making Big Moves, to being that guy begging Congress and whining that no one will let him do anything.
