Originally published at: It Sure Looks Like the Trump Admin Is Prepping for SCOTUS To Demolish Its Tariff Policy - TPM – Talking Points Memo
President Donald Trump’s foreign trade policy has been marked by contradiction from the beginning of his second term. He says he’s using tariffs to help close the U.S. budget deficit while increasing that deficit by $2.4 trillion with his signature tax cuts and defense spending package. He ran as a populist promising to decrease inflation,…
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Bessant could raise signifant funds by sitting inside a dunk tank and letting people enthusiastically throw softballs (hard as they can) in his general direction. JMO
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Tariffs, basically a tax on American firms and households, were accepted by the general public despite clear warnings from economists. And they were largely a business Trump created for himself to sell waivers and collect tribute. Where does this leave the GOP when the scheme mercifully collapses? Unfortunately, the knee-jerk second-best go-to solution for conservative parties is austerity, starting with weakest in society as austerity for the rich might affect stock prices or crypto sales. Then wonderful US media, which still can’t explain who pays tariffs, will spend a couple years trying to explain who is getting ridden raw by the president’s austerity program.
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SCOTUS invited this administration to break the law with its previous rulings. If by any possibility that it should rule any part of their criminality is illegal, the administration will simply move on to a different way to break the law, by the way a feature SCOTUS clearly intended.
This represents law by ideology and the new ideology is “tariffs!”, sort of like the old ideology “no taxes (for the rich)!”. That either makes no economic sense as formulated by them is no matter.
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“And I think part of the reason for that has been the fear that if the tariffs go away, that there’s gonna be no incentive for each country to sit down and bribe the president of the United States.”
There fixed it.
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Trumps tariff policy is about transferring the tax burden from the rich to the consumer (poor and middle class) as a prelude to ending all taxes on the rich and upper class.
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I don’t imagine the court will un-do anything that the First Felon has put in place. The unraveling of the economy will continue and, if the Dems are smart, they will run on this unraveling. There’s no blaming the Dems for the potential collapse here, no matter how they try to spin this in the media.
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Sorry but depending on the Roberts Court to do the right thing is a fool’s errand.
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Softballs?
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I see Hegseth getting the boot first. And though FBI Director isn’t a cabinet position per se, I think Kash Patel may also be moving on before too long.
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The wheels on the bus are falling off, falling off…
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No one is going anywhere. I have every confidence that these folks will be allowed to destroy everything they can get their hands on in whatever time they have allotted to them. The First Felon has absolutely no say in this - this is gonna be Miller, by himself.
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It is an understatement to say that Scott Bessent doesn’t present himself well. His answer to the question “Who pays tariffs?” was pathetic. In all matters of economics, he kowtows to DJT’s inane instincts, effectively saying and agreeing that “up is down.”
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Tariffs are one of the things that TFG promises are an absolute necessity if we want to keep being a country. His ace in the hole that “we won’t have a country anymore” has been played so often that it hardly resonates at all any longer.
I do assume, however, that he will do something outrageous and damaging in a “look what you made me do” rage if SCOTUS rules against him.
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while increasing that deficit by $2.4 trillion
We need to take away the federal credit card.
In effect, Reagan spent three terms worth of money during a two-term presidency. How much are Republicans going to take this time?
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Bondi and Patel breathing a sigh of relief over Hagueseth commiting war crimes overshadowing their cover-up of Trump’s Epstein complicity.
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All of it, Katie.
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NYTPitchBot: Dems own the recession for failing to stop Trump from blowing up the economy.
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