I just heard the news that the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 against Trump’s authority to impose the tariffs as he did. So, @Puck_Mendelssohn, do you think there will be a refund process? (I don’t think the court decision mentioned it.)
Trump already had promised to use the $250+ billion in tariff revenue to pay for something like $2.5 trillion in new programs. Now the math will get even more challenging for him. (I wonder: Will he still be able to lower prescription drug prices by 200, 400, 600, and even 1200%?)
Meanwhile, Trump is suing the federal government for $10 billion, pledging the proceeds to Charity. Charity—a beauty pageant contestant from his past with whom he had an affair—could not be reached for comment. (Yes, that is a painfully obvious joke but I still had to say it.)
I suspect this SCOTUS decision may complicate Trump’s threat to levy tariffs on Puerto Rico in retaliation for the Bad Bunny Super Bowl halftime show—and the NFL’s new kickoff rule.
(And, @John_Harshman, I agree with you: This shouldn’t sound so real.)
Yes, I think so. There already are processes by which one can claim back taxes which were over-paid on an entry of goods, and those have fairly loose deadlines, so I’m not even sure we have to do anything other than some routine filings. The tricky part will be for those importers whose deadlines have passed. Under normal conditions, that’d be nobody, but the kleptocrats have started playing fast and loose with the rules, and have tried to shorten the process – Costco had a big lawsuit against them just to stop them from doing that.
I am, these days, in the electronics manufacturing business, and we use a lot of Taiwanese parts, as well as some from Japan and Liechtenstein and a few products from China and Indonesia. We have paid the kleptocrats something like $60-70K in illegal tariffs over the last year. This has been really bad for American manufacturing firms and, contrary to many people’s intuitions on the subject, has thrown a huge advantage to our foreign competition – especially in our export markets, but the impact on our domestic market has been severe, too. So I’m all smiles right now, though the details of how to get our money back are now something I need to spend some time learning about.
And, of course, the other shoe may drop. This method of executive-imposed tariffs was the broadest but most questionable, but other methods exist, and we may just see more of the same, in slightly different terms. Kleptocrats, as they say, gonna klept.
It seems the ruling is even better than I expected. The Supreme Court didn’t rule that his “emergency” was fake (even though it certainly was) - they ruled flat out that the Act he used doesn’t give the President any power to impose tariffs.
I do expect some shitting. I gather he has now made use of the phrase “fucking courts” in his conference call with the governors. What company manufactures Depends? I need to make some stock purchases.
So he can’t impose tariffs, because the Constitution. But he can still dispatch the Navy SEALS to assassinate someone he doesn’t like, because executive powers.
And he’s putting a 10% global tariff in place - but it is limited to 150 days. If he can’t come up with anything better he’ll probably just do it again when the 150 days are up - but the courts ought to stop him doing that. Ought to,