Barackface: 4: Trump, Trade, Tariff

Thursday, September 04, 2025

4: Trump, Trade, Tariff

Trump Is Trying to Blackmail the Supreme Court The legal arguments for Trump’s tariffs are weak, so he’s arguing their rejection would bring ruin. ........ The desperation is both palpable and warranted given the conspicuous weakness of the administration’s legal arguments, as underscored by a series of lower court rulings against him. That has in turn led the president and his aides to make increasingly histrionic public claims about what will happen if the Supreme Court does not cave and side with Trump. ...... Call it The Chicken Little Defense: If the courts do not sign off on the administration’s tariffs, it “would be a total disaster for the Country” and “would literally destroy the United States of America,” Trump said on Friday after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled that the bulk of the president’s tariffs are illegal. He doubled down on those claims on Tuesday while tacking on the transparently ridiculous assertion that

the U.S. is “taking in $17 trillion … because of tariffs.”

............. This should all be seen for what it is — a tacit admission that the administration is on very weak footing as a legal matter. The most charitable interpretation of the effort is that the administration is lobbying the Supreme Court to engage in the sort of outcome-driven judicial activism that conservatives have long claimed to hate. A less generous read of the situation is that this is an effort to politically blackmail the court into giving Trump what he wants even if it is clearly unlawful or unconstitutional. .......... The administration has been pursuing this strategy in the lower courts for months, and it has so far flopped. ............ Trump claimed last month that a loss would yield “a GREAT DEPRESSION.” Solicitor General John Sauer and Brett Shumate, who heads the Justice Department’s Civil Division, told the court that “the United States was a dead country” before Trump took office and that “the economic consequences” of a loss “would be ruinous, instead of unprecedented success.” .......... Last Friday, Rubio upped the ante by claiming that an adverse ruling would make it harder for the administration to end the war in Ukraine. ............. These over-the-top claims make some sense if you have been following the administration’s floundering in the courts. The administration’s IEEPA tariffs have been on weak legal footing from the start, and the government’s arguments have not gotten any better over time.
What’s less clear is whether this Supreme Court, which has shown Trump stunning deference again and again, will care.
.......... IEEPA — a statute that is generally used to impose economic sanctions — does not even contain the word “tariffs,” and before Trump, no president had attempted to use IEEPA to impose tariffs in the nearly 50 years since the statute has been on the books. In fact, Congress passed IEEPA to limit the president’s emergency economic powers — not to give him the ability to impose a massive tax increase on Americans without congressional approval, or to disrupt the global financial system whenever he wants and for whatever reason he wants. ........ the “major questions doctrine” developed in recent years by the Republican appointees on the Supreme Court. Under that doctrine, when an executive action crosses some undefined threshold of “economic and political significance,” there must be a clear delegation of authority from Congress. If that does not exist, then the action is unlawful. .......... Conservatives cheered this theory on when the conservative majority on the Supreme Court used it to toss out the bulk of Joe Biden’s student-loan forgiveness plan, but the proposed economic impact of that initiative pales in comparison to Trump’s tariff policy. A model from Yale University currently estimates that Trump’s tariffs will increase inflation and cost the average American household $2,400 this year alone; that the tariffs will result in half-a-million lost jobs by the end of the year; and that they will shrink the American economy by about $125 billion a year. The model estimates that the government would raise $2.7 trillion in revenue through the tariffs, which amount to a large and regressive tax on the American people. .............. In the face of all this, the Trump administration’s legal defense boils down to the claim that IEEPA gives the president the statutory power to “regulate” imports, and that this effectively gives the president carte blanche to impose tariffs whenever he wants and for whatever reason he wants. This may sound persuasive if you know nothing else about the relevant legal framework, but as the Federal Circuit concluded last week, “the mere authorization to ‘regulate’ does not in and of itself imply the authority to impose tariffs.” Indeed, the Constitution itself distinguishes between the power to regulate and the power to tax. ......... it is not the job of the Supreme Court to save the president, his Cabinet or his lawyers from their own mistakes or to prevent them from being embarrassed on the international stage. That can happen anytime the court rules against the sitting president in a major executive-power case, and that tension is an essential part of judicial review and the American constitutional system. ....... On the legal merits, all of this should be sufficient for the Republican appointees on the court to rule against Trump, but there is an added ancillary benefit for them: They could side with the American public at a time when their credibility is in the tank. ...........
According to a Gallup poll released last month, the Supreme Court’s approval has hit yet another all-time low.
This can likely be chalked up to the Republican appointees’ decision to overturn Roe v. Wade in 2022 and a series of major victories that they have handed Trump since he returned to office. .......... roughly 60 percent of the American public opposes the tariffs, and according to a poll aggregator from the New York Times, Trump’s approval rating is well underwater — with 43 percent of Americans approving and 52 percent of Americans disapproving of his performance. ......... Exhibit A is the Trump immunity ruling that the conservative justices handed down last summer, which paved the way for Trump’s reelection. The conservatives on the court claim to be textualists and originalists, but in that ruling, all six of them issued a decision with no basis in the text of the Constitution or the Framers’ expectations. The other way for conservative justices to contort themselves in Trump’s favor is to adopt the administration’s claim that IEEPA is an ambiguous and open-ended presidential foreign policy tool, despite the evidence to the contrary. The Supreme Court has a long tradition of deferring to presidents on foreign affairs and national security issues, and if the conservatives are intent on sticking with Trump, it’s an obvious path. ......... Ultimately there is no way to definitively predict how the conservatives will approach the tariff case. Only two of them need to join the three Democratic appointees to rule against Trump, but that was true in the immunity case too. ......... the Trump tariff policy may turn out to have been a political, legal and diplomatic debacle of historic proportions. The Trump administration has spent the last six months frustrating and antagonizing our allies with an endlessly changing policy that has thoroughly disrupted the global economic system, while also proposing to unilaterally and dramatically raise taxes on the American public without the input of their elected representatives. ............. if Trump is right — if his tariffs are necessary and wonderful and will stave off a Great Depression while also bringing an end to the Russia-Ukraine war — then he should go to Congress and get it to pass a law codifying them. ........... the tariffs are very unpopular and most GOP lawmakers have no interest in voting for them. ...........
The question “Where’s Congress?” has become one of the defining questions of the second Trump term.
........... Republicans on Capitol Hill have let Trump have his way pretty much all year. The fact that they will not bail him out here is telling....... Will the Republican appointees on the Supreme Court do it instead? We are about to find out.

Trump Asks Supreme Court to Allow His Sweeping Tariffs A federal appeals court had invalidated a centerpiece of President Trump’s economic strategy, finding that a 1977 law did not authorize the tariffs. ......... The Trump administration on Wednesday asked the Supreme Court to move swiftly to allow the president to continue imposing sprawling tariffs on nations around the world, setting up a major test of his trade policies and his expansion of executive power. ............ Solicitor General D. John Sauer asked the justices to decide by Sept. 10 whether to review the case and to schedule oral argument for the first week of November — just one month after the court’s new term begins. If the justices accept the case, it would be the first to reach the court in Mr. Trump’s second term that directly tests the legality of one of the administration’s signature initiatives rather than addressing the president’s actions on a temporary emergency basis. .......... The lower court’s “erroneous decision has disrupted highly impactful, sensitive, ongoing diplomatic trade negotiations, and cast a pall of legal uncertainty over the president’s efforts to protect our country by preventing an unprecedented economic and foreign-policy crisis,” the solicitor general told the justices in his request for highly expedited review. ............ In its 7-to-4 ruling, the appeals court said the tariffs were a core constitutional power given to Congress and noted that the statute at issue did not include the word “tariffs” nor synonyms such as “tax” or “duty.” ............ “The power of the purse (including the power to tax) belongs to Congress,” the appeals court said in an unsigned opinion. ........ Mr. Trump’s lawyers characterized the tariffs as the administration’s “most significant economic and foreign-policy initiative,” which the president has “determined are necessary to rectify America’s country-killing trade deficits and to stem the flood of fentanyl across our borders.” ......... A coalition of prominent conservative and libertarian lawyers, scholars and former officials filed a brief in June opposing Mr. Trump’s tariffs and emphasizing that the powers to tax must remain with Congress. ...... The statute “embodies an eyes-open congressional grant of broad emergency authority in this foreign-affairs realm, which unsurprisingly extends beyond authorities available under nonemergency laws,” wrote Judge Richard G. Taranto, a nominee of President Barack Obama, who was joined by three other judges.

NYC Mayor Eric Adams faces a decision: A Trump administration post to drop his reelection campaign The embattled New York City mayor was offered a HUD post, a person familiar with the talks tells POLITICO.

John Deere, a U.S. Icon, Is Undermined by Tariffs and Struggling Farmers The tractor maker said that sales were down and that higher metal tariffs would cost it $600 million, while American farmers face dwindling overseas demand for some crops. ......... John Deere, the leading supplier of agricultural machinery in the United States. ....... One of the country’s largest manufacturers is worse off now than it was six months ago. ........ Higher tariffs, primarily on steel but also on aluminum, have cost the company $300 million so far, with nearly another $300 million expected by the end of the year. This summer the company laid off 238 employees across factories in Illinois and Iowa. ........ Yet John Deere is just the sort of manufacturing powerhouse that Mr. Trump says he wants more of in the United States. The company, based in Moline, Ill., has made farm equipment since 1837. Its green-and-yellow tractors, combines and sprayers help farmers feed the country and produce billions of dollars’ worth of crops for export. ........ The company employs 30,000 workers in 60 facilities across the country and said more than 75 percent of its machines were assembled in the United States. Just 25 percent of the components used in its products come from foreign countries, John Deere said.......... After Mr. Trump announced steep tariffs on Chinese goods this year, China placed retaliatory tariffs on U.S. soybeans in March. Soy exports to China are down 51 percent this year, and the country hasn’t made any advance purchases of soybeans for the upcoming harvest. U.S. growers are expected to receive $3.4 billion less for their soybean crop than they did last year, according to the Agriculture Department.

Late Night Thinks Trump Has a Case of Parade Envy “It sounds like somebody’s bummed he wasn’t invited to the supervillain sleepover,” Jimmy Kimmel said of the president’s reaction to China’s big military parade............. “Please give my warmest regards to Vladimir Putin, and Kim Jong Un, as you conspire against The United States of America.” ........ “All of Trump’s strongman crushes were there. It felt like it was staged specifically to upset — it was like the diplomatic equivalent of posting a bikini shot to make your ex jealous.” — JIMMY KIMMEL ........ “Trump really wants to get the Epstein files off the front page. Today he ordered Travis and Taylor to get engaged again.” — JIMMY FALLON

US Supreme Court poised to resolve clashes over Trump's power President Donald Trump has pushed the boundaries of executive power to impose sweeping tariffs, crack down on immigration and attempt to fire a Federal Reserve governor, and these actions could dominate the U.S. Supreme Court's upcoming docket......... "It's about to be, 'Does the president have the power to do that?' season at the Supreme Court," said Loyola Law School professor Jessica Levinson. "While each case brings up slightly different issues, when and if the Supreme Court tackles deportations, tariffs and the firing of members of executive agencies, the big question will be whether or not President Trump had the authority to take those actions." ......... The court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, has already handed major wins to the Republican president in his second term, granting emergency requests to implement his policies while challenges play out in lower courts. ........ "The scope of executive power has been - and will continue to be - the recurring legal issue of Trump’s second term," said Robert Luther III, a George Mason University law professor. “And why wouldn't President Trump want it to be? The Supreme Court has consistently backed his muscular assertions of presidential power." ....... The Alien Enemies Act expansively empowers the government to detain and deport citizens of hostile nations in times of war or during an "invasion or predatory incursion.” The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals blocked the deportation of Venezuelan migrants under the law, rejecting the administration’s view that the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua had made a "predatory incursion" on U.S. soil.

Alarm as US far-right extremists eye drones for use in domestic attacks Experts say extremists openly talking of how home-built drones will be critical tool in so-called second civil war ...... And there’s ample reasons for those fears: in the open and closed online spaces where far-right extremists congregate, talk is commonplace of how these cheap drones are revolutionizing current wars and will be the critical tools of a so-called second civil war. ........ Fisher-Birch gave the recent example of a neo-Nazi in Nashville who plotted to bomb a power station with a drone, but was foiled by police. According to Fisher-Birch, there is already extremist chatter observing how criminal groups use the drones as force multipliers against government forces. ......... Multiple sources told the Guardian that the FBI has major concerns about the accelerationist neo-Nazi sect on the far right – one calling for an insurgency against the US government – and other ultra-violent actors in the same ideological space, eyeing the use of FPV drones for domestic attacks. ......... “I am a drone operator, one of the first in the infantry,” said an anonymous neo-Nazi and Substack writer who is an avowed ex-member of the Atomwaffen Division (AWD), a now defunct and proscribed terrorist organization linked to multiple murders in the US. “The drones the military uses are entirely useless when you look at the reality on the ground in Ukraine. The future is cheap, 3D-printed drones with a [high-explosive] round zip tied to it.” ......... Within the more organized terrorist underbelly of parallel groups to the AWD, such as the Base, long the subject of a nationwide counter-terrorism investigation, veterans and active-duty soldiers like the writer are coveted and intentionally recruited as operatives. Last year, Rinaldo Nazzaro, founder and leader of the Base who is himself a former Pentagon contractor, offered money to any veteran willing to school his stateside cadres in paramilitarism. .......... Brandon Russell, the founder of the AWD, is a veteran who idolizes Timothy McVeigh and was recently found guilty of planning to destroy Maryland substations in an effort to take out the Baltimore power grid. .........