An A+++++ Economy, My A++ Trump made big boasts but he isn’t delivering ....................... When Politico recently asked Donald Trump to grade the current U.S. economy, he replied “A-plus-plus-plus-plus-plus.” ......... While it’s too soon to declare that we’re in a recession, the data are at least pre-recessionary: that is, the numbers are weak enough that we should be seriously worried that a recession is coming. .............. the data show a weak labor market .............. The headline unemployment rate in November was 4.6 percent, up from an average of 4 percent in 2024. That number is close to triggering the Sahm Rule, an economic rule of thumb devised by Claudia Sahm, a former economist at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, that has historically been highly successful at identifying the early stages of a recession. ...............
a recession is on the horizon.
................ None other than Jerome Powell has suggested that official job growth is probably overstated by around 60,000 a month. .........
the Trumpian project of bringing “masculine” blue-collar jobs back is going badly.
................ Trump owns this economy — because he broke it. ................ the economy that Trump inherited when he took office was in much better shape than today’s economy, with lower unemployment combined with faster job growth, and inflation trending down. .............. Trump’s radical policy changes – huge (illegal) tariffs, mass deportations, big tax cuts (for the rich), benefit cuts (for the poor and middle class), mass layoffs of federal workers, disinvesting in huge green energy projects and aid to farmers — have been clearly damaging to everything besides crypto and AI. It strains credulity – even for the Trump faithful – to claim that we are still in Joe Biden’s economy. ..................... how can Trump blame Biden for a troubled economy when he won’t admit that we have a troubled economy? .............. the two Trump “gaps” — the difference between what he promised and what he has delivered, and the gap between what he says is happening and what everyone can see with their own eyes. ............... “Populist” leaders like Trump — I don’t like the term, but it has come to mean politicians who have disdain for responsible policy and the rule of law — do long-term economic damage. ................. on average, such leaders leave GDP 10 percent lower after 15 years than it would otherwise have been. ............
Trumpism is reducing our future living standards.
........ he intends to gaslight Americans yet again, claiming that things are going well. They aren’t.
A mass driver is basically a giant electromagnetic catapult. You build a track on the Moon, run current through superconducting coils, and yeet payloads into space at 5,300 mph. No fuel. No rocket engines. Just electricity.
Last month, a bunch of scare headlines claimed that AI was “wreaking havoc” on U.S. jobs. This was based on October’s Challenger Gray report, which tracks announced layoffs.
These headlines were misleading or outright false.
U.S. Layoffs Poised to Surpass Great Recession Levels: On Track for the Worst Since the Great Depression
The United States may be approaching a historic inflection point in labor markets. Layoffs are accelerating across sectors at a pace that threatens to exceed even the darkest years of the 2008–09 Great Recession—placing today’s job losses on a trajectory not seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
This is not a normal cyclical slowdown. Nor is it a temporary post-pandemic correction. What is unfolding appears to be a structural reset of how work is priced, performed, and valued in the modern U.S. economy.
A Crisis Hiding in Plain Sight
Official unemployment figures often lag reality. They smooth out pain across months, masking mass terminations behind statistical averages. Layoff announcements, however—especially large, sudden, and concentrated ones—tell a more immediate story.
That story is grim.
Unlike the Great Recession, when layoffs were heavily concentrated in housing, construction, and finance, today’s job losses are broad-based:
Technology: Once seen as recession-proof, tech has shed hundreds of thousands of jobs through rolling “rightsizing” waves.
White-collar services: Consulting, media, marketing, legal services, and professional support roles are shrinking rapidly.
Retail and logistics: Slowing consumer demand and automation are hitting employment simultaneously.
Manufacturing: Even firms benefiting from reshoring trends are cutting labor through automation and productivity drives.
What makes this moment uniquely dangerous is not just the scale—but the irreversibility of many of these cuts.
Why This Is Different From 2008
The Great Recession was triggered by a financial system collapse. Credit froze. Demand evaporated. Once the system stabilized, many jobs came back.
Today’s layoffs are driven by deeper forces:
1. AI and Automation Are Permanent
Many eliminated roles are not coming back because machines now do the work:
Software replaces junior coders
AI tools replace analysts, researchers, copywriters, and support staff
Automation replaces middle managers and coordinators
This is not a downturn. It is technological displacement.
2. Overhiring Was Not the Real Problem
The popular narrative claims companies simply “overhired” during the pandemic. But that explanation fails to justify:
Multiple layoff rounds at the same firms
Layoffs continuing even as profits rise
Job cuts in sectors unrelated to pandemic demand
The truth is harsher: companies are relearning how few humans they actually need.
3. Globalization No Longer Absorbs the Shock
In past downturns, offshoring helped companies survive while preserving overall employment levels globally. Today, geopolitics, tariffs, friend-shoring, and supply-chain nationalism are reducing that safety valve.
The pressure lands directly on workers.
The Psychological Recession
Even beyond raw numbers, the labor market is experiencing something more corrosive: fear.
Workers are:
Staying in bad jobs to avoid risk
Accepting lower wages or worse conditions
Delaying life decisions—homes, children, businesses
This fear suppresses consumer demand, which leads to further layoffs, creating a self-reinforcing downward spiral reminiscent of pre-New Deal America.
In the Great Depression, unemployment peaked near 25%. But the damage wasn’t just unemployment—it was loss of confidence in the future. That same psychological fracture is now reappearing.
Why the Great Depression Comparison Is No Longer Hyperbole
Comparisons to the Great Depression were once taboo—viewed as alarmist or irresponsible. Increasingly, they are analytical.
Key similarities are emerging:
Structural job loss, not cyclical layoffs
Technological transformation outpacing social safety nets
Extreme inequality, where profits and productivity rise while labor collapses
Policy paralysis, as institutions designed for 20th-century economics struggle to respond
The U.S. entered the Great Depression with tractors replacing farm labor. Today, it enters a similar moment with AI replacing cognitive labor.
Different tools. Same outcome.
What Comes Next?
If current trends continue, the U.S. faces several possible paths:
1. A Slow-Motion Employment Collapse
Layoffs continue in waves, normalized as “efficiency,” until a permanently smaller workforce becomes the new baseline.
2. Social and Political Backlash
Historically, mass unemployment fuels extremism, populism, and institutional distrust. The risk is not theoretical—it is historical.
3. A Rethink of Work Itself
This crisis may finally force serious discussions about:
Universal basic income
Shorter workweeks
Decoupling survival from employment
New definitions of productivity and value
The Great Depression gave birth to Social Security, labor rights, and modern regulation. This crisis may demand an equally bold reinvention.
Conclusion: A Turning Point, Not a Temporary Slump
If U.S. layoffs do indeed surpass Great Recession levels—and remain on track toward Great Depression-scale disruption—this will mark the end of an era, not just a bad economic cycle.
The post-World War II assumption that each generation will have more jobs, better pay, and greater security than the last is breaking down.
What replaces it is still unclear.
But one thing is certain: This is not a normal recession. It is a reckoning with the future of work itself.
— The Conservative Alternative (@OldeWorldOrder) December 7, 2025
अमेरिका में छंटनियाँ ग्रेट रिसेशन को भी पीछे छोड़ने की ओर
ग्रेट डिप्रेशन के बाद सबसे बुरा दौर बनने की आशंका
संयुक्त राज्य अमेरिका का श्रम बाज़ार संभवतः एक ऐतिहासिक मोड़ पर खड़ा है। विभिन्न क्षेत्रों में छंटनियाँ जिस तेज़ी से बढ़ रही हैं, वे 2008–09 के ग्रेट रिसेशन (महामंदी) के सबसे बुरे वर्षों को भी पार करने की ओर बढ़ रही हैं—और संकेत मिल रहे हैं कि यह स्थिति 1930 के दशक की ग्रेट डिप्रेशन (महामंदी) के बाद सबसे गंभीर हो सकती है।
यह कोई सामान्य आर्थिक मंदी नहीं है।
और न ही यह महामारी के बाद का अस्थायी सुधार है।
जो सामने आ रहा है, वह आधुनिक अमेरिकी अर्थव्यवस्था में काम की कीमत, प्रकृति और आवश्यकता का एक संरचनात्मक पुनर्गठन है।
सबकी नज़रों के सामने छिपा संकट
आधिकारिक बेरोज़गारी आँकड़े अक्सर वास्तविकता से पीछे रह जाते हैं। वे महीनों में औसत बनाकर दर्द को छिपा देते हैं। इसके विपरीत, अचानक और बड़े पैमाने पर घोषित की गई छंटनियाँ तुरंत सच्चाई उजागर कर देती हैं।
और वह सच्चाई चिंताजनक है।
ग्रेट रिसेशन के दौरान छंटनियाँ मुख्यतः रियल एस्टेट, निर्माण और वित्तीय क्षेत्रों तक सीमित थीं। लेकिन आज की स्थिति अलग है—आज की छंटनियाँ लगभग हर क्षेत्र में हो रही हैं:
टेक्नोलॉजी: जिसे कभी मंदी-प्रूफ माना जाता था, वहाँ लगातार “राइटसाइज़िंग” के नाम पर लाखों नौकरियाँ खत्म हो चुकी हैं।
व्हाइट-कॉलर सेवाएँ: कंसल्टिंग, मीडिया, मार्केटिंग, कानूनी सेवाएँ और प्रोफेशनल सपोर्ट रोल तेज़ी से घट रहे हैं।
रिटेल और लॉजिस्टिक्स: घटती उपभोक्ता मांग और ऑटोमेशन एक साथ चोट कर रहे हैं।
मैन्युफैक्चरिंग: रीशोरिंग से लाभ उठाने वाली कंपनियाँ भी उत्पादकता बढ़ाने के नाम पर कर्मचारियों की संख्या घटा रही हैं।
इस दौर को ख़तरनाक बनाने वाली बात सिर्फ़ छंटनियों की संख्या नहीं है—बल्कि यह तथ्य है कि इनमें से कई नौकरियाँ हमेशा के लिए खत्म हो रही हैं।
2008 से यह दौर अलग क्यों है
ग्रेट रिसेशन का कारण वित्तीय प्रणाली का ढहना था। कर्ज़ रुक गया, मांग गिर गई। हालात सुधरने पर कई नौकरियाँ वापस आईं।
लेकिन आज की छंटनियाँ कहीं गहरे कारणों से हो रही हैं:
1. AI और ऑटोमेशन स्थायी हैं
आज हटाई जा रही कई भूमिकाएँ इसलिए वापस नहीं आएँगी क्योंकि मशीनें अब वही काम कर रही हैं:
जूनियर कोडर्स की जगह सॉफ्टवेयर
एनालिस्ट, रिसर्चर, कॉपीराइटर और सपोर्ट स्टाफ की जगह AI टूल्स
मिडिल मैनेजमेंट की जगह ऑटोमेटेड सिस्टम
यह मंदी नहीं—तकनीकी विस्थापन है।
2. “ओवरहायरिंग” असली वजह नहीं
यह कहना कि कंपनियों ने महामारी के दौरान ज़्यादा लोगों को रख लिया था, अधूरा सच है। यह इस बात की व्याख्या नहीं करता कि:
एक ही कंपनी में कई दौर की छंटनियाँ क्यों हो रही हैं
मुनाफ़ा बढ़ने के बावजूद नौकरियाँ क्यों कट रही हैं
गैर-कोविड सेक्टरों में भी छंटनियाँ क्यों हैं
कठोर सच्चाई यह है: कंपनियाँ फिर से सीख रही हैं कि उन्हें वास्तव में कितने कम इंसानों की ज़रूरत है।
3. वैश्वीकरण अब झटका नहीं संभाल पा रहा
पिछली मंदियों में आउटसोर्सिंग ने कंपनियों को बचाया। आज भू-राजनीति, टैरिफ, फ्रेंड-शोरिंग और सप्लाई-चेन राष्ट्रवाद ने उस रास्ते को भी सीमित कर दिया है।
नतीजा—सीधा बोझ मज़दूरों पर।
मनोवैज्ञानिक मंदी
आँकड़ों से आगे एक और ख़तरनाक चीज़ पनप रही है: डर।
कर्मचारी:
खराब नौकरियों में फँसे रह रहे हैं
कम वेतन और खराब शर्तें स्वीकार कर रहे हैं
घर, परिवार और व्यवसाय जैसे फैसले टाल रहे हैं
यह डर उपभोक्ता मांग को दबाता है, जिससे और छंटनियाँ होती हैं—और एक आत्म-विनाशकारी चक्र बनता है, ठीक वैसा ही जैसा न्यू डील से पहले अमेरिका में था।
ग्रेट डिप्रेशन में समस्या सिर्फ़ बेरोज़गारी नहीं थी—भविष्य में भरोसे का टूटना था। वही दरार आज फिर दिख रही है।
ग्रेट डिप्रेशन की तुलना अब अतिशयोक्ति क्यों नहीं रही
पहले इस तरह की तुलना को डर फैलाने वाला माना जाता था। अब यह विश्लेषण बनती जा रही है।
कुछ समानताएँ स्पष्ट हैं:
चक्रीय नहीं, संरचनात्मक नौकरी का नुकसान
तकनीक की रफ्तार से पीछे रह गए सामाजिक सुरक्षा तंत्र
बढ़ती असमानता—जहाँ उत्पादकता और मुनाफ़ा बढ़ते हैं, लेकिन श्रम सिकुड़ता है
नीतिगत जड़ता, जहाँ 20वीं सदी के लिए बने संस्थान 21वीं सदी की अर्थव्यवस्था से निपट नहीं पा रहे
1930 के दशक में ट्रैक्टरों ने खेतों की नौकरियाँ छीनीं।
आज AI दिमाग़ी काम की नौकरियाँ छीन रहा है।
औज़ार अलग हैं। परिणाम समान।
आगे क्या होगा?
अगर मौजूदा रुझान जारी रहते हैं, तो अमेरिका के सामने कुछ संभावित रास्ते हैं:
1. धीमी गति से रोजगार का पतन
छंटनियाँ “एफ़िशिएंसी” के नाम पर सामान्य होती जाएँगी, और एक छोटा स्थायी कार्यबल नया मानक बन जाएगा।
2. सामाजिक और राजनीतिक प्रतिक्रिया
इतिहास बताता है कि बड़े पैमाने पर बेरोज़गारी कट्टरवाद, उग्र राजनीति और संस्थानों पर अविश्वास को जन्म देती है।
3. काम की परिभाषा पर पुनर्विचार
यह संकट शायद मजबूर करेगा गंभीर बहसों के लिए:
यूनिवर्सल बेसिक इनकम
कम कार्यघंटे
जीविका को नौकरी से अलग करना
उत्पादकता और मूल्य की नई परिभाषाएँ
ग्रेट डिप्रेशन ने सोशल सिक्योरिटी, श्रम अधिकार और आधुनिक नियमन को जन्म दिया था। यह संकट भी उतने ही साहसिक बदलाव की माँग कर सकता है।
निष्कर्ष: अस्थायी मंदी नहीं, युगांत
अगर अमेरिकी छंटनियाँ सचमुच ग्रेट रिसेशन से आगे निकलती हैं और ग्रेट डिप्रेशन-स्तरीय व्यवधान की ओर बढ़ती हैं, तो यह सिर्फ़ एक बुरा दौर नहीं होगा—यह एक युग का अंत होगा।
द्वितीय विश्व युद्ध के बाद का यह विश्वास कि हर पीढ़ी को अधिक नौकरियाँ, बेहतर वेतन और अधिक सुरक्षा मिलेगी—अब टूट रहा है।
आगे क्या आएगा, यह स्पष्ट नहीं।
लेकिन इतना तय है: यह सामान्य मंदी नहीं है—यह काम के भविष्य के साथ एक निर्णायक टकराव है।
End absolutely all immigration (Legal,Visas) until every able American is employed.
It's because Trump went into office for his second term & began foolishly emulating Argentina's mentally ill President Javier Milei in firing hoards of government workers unwisely thinking it would fix the economy. Then what happened? He had to ask Trump for a $40 billion bailout
tariffs “protecting” retail by helping it die 139% faster. brilliant, truly 12d chess having said that, nothing sells recession futures like tweeting we’re already in one. polymarket running the scare tactic playbook perfectly
polymarket's got the odds, but reality's the house always winning against us. 2025 layoffs second-highest since '09 recession peak—trump's crew promised boom, delivered bust. what's the play now, more tax cuts for the top?
Trump Tariff Trouble His doublethink may be too much even for the supine Supremes .......... On April 2 — “Liberation Day” — Donald Trump imposed huge tariffs on scores of countries, including our closest allies as well as islands inhabited only by penguins. In one fell swoop he reversed 90 years of U.S. trade liberalization and violated solemn international agreements. Trump didn’t try to get his tariffs enacted by Congress (which, compliant as Republicans are, wouldn’t have passed them.) Instead he imposed tariffs by executive fiat, invoking the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act — a law that was clearly intended to respond to, you know, emergencies.
It was clearly not intended to bestow upon the president the right to do whatever he wants.
................... Trump’s signature economic policy may soon melt down into a puddle of incompetence and humiliation. If that should happen, I will celebrate both the end of an extraordinarily bad policy and the Supreme Court’s willingness to (finally!) check Trump’s authoritarian behavior. ............ the Court for International Trade, in their ruling against the Trump tariffs, made a different argument. The Emergency Powers Act only empowers the president to act in response to economic emergencies. And while the White House has declared two such emergencies —trade deficits and fentanyl — the CIT found that neither declaration provided a plausible rationale for the actual tariffs Trump imposed. ............ More broadly, supporting Trump’s tariffs requires engaging in doublethink. You have to believe Trump’s assertions that everything is wonderful, that this is the best economy ever. But you also have to believe that we’re facing an economic emergency that justifies massive tariff increases, hitting almost every nation and abrogating generations’ worth of international agreements.
Justice Kagan came close to acknowledging this doublethink by caustically saying “It turns out we’re in emergencies all the time.”
.............. With the Justices suggesting that Trump’s tariffs infringe on Congress’s unique right to set tax rates, Sauer declared that “they are not revenue-raising tariffs”. That’s essentially an impossible position to argue .......... So the tariffs are legal because they aren’t revenue-raising; also, look at how much revenue they’re raising! The fact that Trump’s own statements completely contradict his lawyers’ arguments explains why even a Supreme Court that normally bends itself into a pretzel to ratify administration policies will probably find his “emergency” tariffs a pretzel too far. ...............
it will be a humiliating defeat for Trump.
It will also create enormous uncertainty. For Trump won’t give up. Instead, he has already promised that he will try to reimpose the tariffs by using — or, actually, abusing — different legal avenues. ............. Trump has been especially fond of Section 232, invoking “national security” as a reason for tariffs on quite a few items that don’t seem especially tied to strategic defense. ......... Imagine what would happen if we were to get involved in a global conflict and were dependent on China for our crucial supplies of love seats and bathroom vanities! ................. The potential for Trump to declare faux national threats is why I am uncomfortable with the Supreme Court ruling against Trump’s IEEPA tariffs on the basis of the constitutional right to levy taxes. With a president as unscrupulous as Trump, we need a precedent against imposing tariffs on the basis of obviously false claims of national emergency. ...........
these tariffs are bad for Americans and bad for the rest of the world
The Rise of Renewable Energy Anatomy of a technological miracle .............. Donald Trump and his officials hate, just hate wind and solar power, and there are many people who still refuse to believe that renewables can be practical even as renewables keep growing around the world, in fact accounting for the bulk of growth in electricity generation. ..............
How did energy sources that a generation ago were widely dismissed as hippie fantasies become a major source of electricity?
Genetic analysis proved that Mr. Li Dan, who kept spreading Buddhism in northern China 1400 years ago, is an ancient Indian descendant.
His tomb in northern China contained both Chinese and Indian elements, which is a gem of cultural exchanges on the Silk Road.🤝🤝 pic.twitter.com/i0EsN9HZdc
In 5 years from now, probably 95% of the tokens used by AI agents will be used on tasks that humans never did before.
I just met with about 30 enterprises across 2 days and a dinner, and some of the most interesting use-cases that keep coming up for AI agents are on bringing…
Nvidia's Jensen Huang: 'China is going to win the AI race,' FT reports The artificial intelligence chip leader's chief in October said that the U.S. can win the AI battle if the world, including China's massive developer base, runs on Nvidia systems. He, however, lamented that the Chinese government has shut it out of its market. ........... "We want the world to be built on American tech stack. Absolutely the case. But we also need to be in China to win their developers. A policy that causes America to lose half of the world's AI developers is not beneficial in the long term, it hurts us more," he added.
Bolstered by big wins, Dems eye out-of-reach Senate races “The Senate map doesn’t look great, but if there’s any hope of winning, we have to be aggressive,” said one consultant. ......... The leader of a Democratic donor network fielded excited calls Tuesday night from donors looking to help expand the party’s chances of winning seats in Texas and Florida. ....... And Senate Democrats are eying Ohio, Iowa and Alaska — states Trump won by double digits — as battlegrounds. ......... party candidates and strategists are strategizing how to expand their electoral opportunities in even the reddest of states in 2026 ......... Before Democrats flipped at least 13 Virginia House of Delegate seats and won gubernatorial contests in New Jersey and Virginia by double-digit margins Tuesday, their chances to snag seats deep into Trump territory seemed out of reach ........... “There is real excitement and energy in the state,” Wahls added, “and fundamentally, we have to win Iowa in order to flip the Senate.” .......... House Majority PAC, the flagship Democratic-aligned super PAC, said it is “expanding the map deeper into GOP territory” and name-checked a trio of seats in North Carolina, Michigan and Virginia that it plans to seriously contest for the first time in nearly a decade. ......... But for Democrats to win in red states like Iowa, Alaska and Ohio, they must dramatically improve their standing with working-class voters, a group that’s shifted from the party over the past decade. ............ Senate Republicans pushed back on Democrats’ expansionist ambitions, arguing that “nothing would make Republicans happier than Democrats making strategy decisions in Iowa, Ohio and Nebraska based on takeaways from New York City electing an openly socialist Democrat,” said Joanna Rodriguez, the National Senatorial Campaign Committee’s communications director.
Donald Trump enters his lame duck era Republicans are starting to contend with the fact that the president will soon be gone, and they'll be fending for themselves. ....... Hours after witnessing his party’s worst electoral drubbing in at least six years, President Donald Trump hosted Senate Republicans at the White House and demanded they ditch their chamber’s supermajority rules........ “If you don’t terminate the filibuster, you’ll be in bad shape,” he told them over breakfast in the State Dining Room. ........... upon returning to the Capitol, the senators made it very clear: They planned to blow Trump off. One GOP senator, Mike Rounds of South Dakota, laughed out loud when asked about the anti-filibuster push. ......... Don’t expect an immediate stampede away from the president, according to interviews with GOP lawmakers and aides Wednesday — he remains overwhelmingly popular with GOP voters and is the party’s most dominant leader in a generation. ......... “He has zero ability to work across the aisle,” he added. “He needs to face reality and learn how to talk to Democrats he can reason with.” ................. Both Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune played down the Democratic victories, casting them as expected losses in blue states — never mind that the margins in New Jersey and Virginia far outstripped expectations and that Democrats also won big in Georgia, Mississippi and Pennsylvania.
A majority of Supreme Court justices on Wednesday asked skeptical questions about President Trump’s use of emergency powers to impose tariffs on imports from nearly every U.S. trading partner, casting doubt on a centerpiece of the administration’s second-term agenda.
.................. Several members of the court’s conservative majority, including Justice Amy Coney Barrett and Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, joined the liberal justices in sharply questioning the Trump administration’s assertion that it has the power to unilaterally impose tariffs without congressional approval. .............. Justice Barrett, who is seen as a key vote, questioned the scope of Mr. Trump’s reciprocal tariffs, which she described as “across the board.” ............ “Is it your contention that every country needed to be tariffed because of threats to the defense and industrial base?” she asked a lawyer for the administration. “Spain? France? I mean, I could see it with some countries but explain to me why as many countries needed to be subject to the reciprocal tariff policy.” .............. Several justices also noted that Mr. Trump was the first president to claim that the 50-year-old emergency statute allowed the president to impose tariffs. .................. The fact that tariffs raise revenue, he said, is “only incidental.” ......... That did not appear to satisfy the three liberal justices, including Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who said: “You want to say tariffs are not taxes, but that’s exactly what they are. They are generating money from American citizens.” ............... In the lead-up to Wednesday’s argument, Mr. Trump called the case “literally, LIFE OR DEATH for our Country,” underscoring the degree to which he views it as critical to his trade and foreign policies. Without the emergency power, he said on social media, the country “is virtually defenseless against other Countries who have, for years, taken advantage of us.” ............ The tariffs were challenged in court by a dozen states, in addition to small businesses, including a wine importer and an educational toy manufacturer. Hundreds of small businesses separately joined court filings that call Mr. Trump’s actions unlawful, saying the tariffs have forced them to raise prices and scale back staffing.......... Until now, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority has been largely receptive to Mr. Trump’s claims of presidential authority, but it has ruled largely on emergency orders that have been technically temporary. The tariffs case, which is considered a legal tossup by experts, is the first time in Mr. Trump’s second term that the justices will address the underlying legal merits of a major administration priority in a more lasting way...........
Justices Gorsuch and Barrett, both nominees of Mr. Trump, raised separation-of-power concerns.
................ They suggested the administration’s position could represent an unconstitutional delegation of legislative power to the executive branch that would be difficult for Congress to reclaim. Justice Gorsuch warned of “a one-way ratchet toward the gradual but continual accretion of power in the executive branch and away from the people’s elected representatives” in Congress. .............. Neal Katyal, the lawyer representing the small businesses, told the justices that “it’s simply implausible” that Congress had “handed the president the power to overhaul the entire tariff system and the American economy in the process, allowing him to set and reset tariffs on any and every product from any and every country, at any and all times.” .............. In a sign of how pivotal the case is to the administration’s agenda, Mr. Trump had talked publicly about attending Wednesday’s argument before reversing course on Sunday, saying he would stay away to avoid becoming a distraction. ................ Instead, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and the U.S. trade representative, Jamieson Greer, watched the argument from the front row of the public gallery. Also in attendance were several senators, including Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts, both Democrats, and Mike Lee of Utah, a Republican. ............... During the nearly three-hour argument, the justices grappled with a doctrine favored by the conservative legal movement. The Supreme Court’s conservative majority repeatedly relied on the “major questions doctrine” to invalidate many of President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s key initiatives, including his student loan forgiveness program. The doctrine says presidential initiatives with “vast economic or political significance” must be clearly authorized by Congress. ............... Chief Justice Roberts suggested to the Trump administration’s lawyer that the same principle would apply to a president trying to invoke a statute for the first time to impose tariffs on “any product from any country for any amount for any length of time.” ............. While this set of the president’s tariffs seemed in peril by the end of the argument, it was not clear on what grounds a majority of the justices might rule or how quickly. ............. The case reached the Supreme Court after three lower courts concluded the tariffs were unlawful.
Why It Will Be Hard for Five Justices to Bless Trump’s Tariffs Earlier this week, the president said that “if a President was not able to quickly and nimbly use the power of Tariffs, we would be defenseless, leading perhaps even to the ruination of our Nation.” ............ the justices the government needs to win the case — Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett — asked the government very hard questions that did express skepticism about important elements of its case. But they also asked the other side very hard questions. I do not think any of these three tipped off their hands definitively. ............ what Justice Gorsuch called the “serious retrieval problem” (i.e., Congress not being able to rein in this power), is the most serious big-picture argument against the president. ............. The nondelegation doctrine is the idea that there are limits on Congress’s power to delegate its legislative power to the president. The government argued that this doctrine did not apply with much force in this case because the tariffs implicated the president’s inherent foreign affairs power. This argument got crushed. Justice Gorsuch, preceded by similar questions from Justice Elena Kagan, got the government to concede that the president does not “have inherent authority over tariffs in peacetime.” ................. “consequences of this case are too big in too many directions — a win or a loss for Trump has massive economic and political consequences, not to mention important legal implications for future presidencies.” ..............
a majority of the court will be very worried, as mentioned above, about giving a president basically unconstrained tariff authority to raise revenue that Congress as a practical matter cannot reverse.
.............. the secretary of the Treasury has made it easier for the court to avoid doing so by claiming in recent weeks that the administration can continue imposing tariffs based on other narrower and somewhat “more cumbersome” authorities that can nonetheless be “effective.” That concession effectively lowered the stakes of the court’s ruling against the president.
A Fresh Way for the Supreme Court to Split Justice Gorsuch’s questioning was damaging for the administration’s case, while Justice Alito very clearly planted his flag for Trump’s tariffs. .......... four votes seem strongly against the administration’s position (Gorsuch, Kagan, Sotomayor and Jackson), two are softer votes against the administration (Barrett and Roberts), two seemed moderately sympathetic to Trump’s case (Kavanaugh and Thomas), and Alito was ready to defend Trump’s tariffs like he was making a goal-line stand in the fourth quarter of the Super Bowl. ............ Barrett zeroed in on the text of the statute Trump has relied on, in a way I thought was devastating. The question is whether the phrase “regulate … importation” gives Trump the authority he’s seeking. Barrett pointed out that those words are not tariffs or duties or imposts .......... Barrett asked for an example, any example, of another law that functions the way the solicitor general, D. John Sauer, says this one does — “Can you point to any other place in the code or any other time in history where that phrase, together, ‘regulate importation,’ has been used to confer tariff-imposing authority?” she said. .............. Justice Barrett, a determined textualist, seems very doubtful that the words in the emergency law Trump used to impose the tariffs mean what he says they mean. For textualists, that should be a death knell. ............. Gorsuch’s closing mic drop. “It does seem to me — tell me if I’m wrong — that a really key part of the context here is the constitutional assignment of the taxing power to Congress,” he said. “The power to reach into the pockets of the American people is just different, and it has been different since the founding.” ..........
Trump is usurping one of the most important functions that the founders gave to Congress to ensure that the president would not be able to act like a king.
................ That’s the crux of why Trump’s claim of authority here is such a blow to the constitutional separation of powers. Tariffs, as some of the justices pointed out, are taxes by another name. ............ If the president can declare an emergency at a whim, as Trump has done by declaring a run-of-the-mill trade deficit a national emergency, and then tariff whoever he wants at whatever rate, which he has also done — Ontario, how dare you run an anti-tariff ad that uses Ronald Reagan’s actual words against this president? — then Congress is not a coequal branch. Not even close. Congress is just … sitting on the sidelines. The president can dun countries or maybe even companies he doesn’t like, raise all the revenue he wants, and Congress can’t do a thing about it unless it can come up with a veto-proof majority to revoke his self-declared emergency powers. Justice Gorsuch pointed out that under this scheme, as a practical matter, Congress can never get its taxing power back. ............... Taxation is a core enumerated power of Congress, and the idea that it delegated its core enumerated authority through a broad, vague statute governing international economic emergencies seems to strike Justice Gorsuch as implausible. ............ Justice Gorsuch asked the solicitor general about the “retrieval problem” — the difficulty of taking power back from the president. It takes only a bare majority of Congress (with presidential assent) to delegate the power, but a supermajority to retrieve the power — unless a president actually wants to surrender the power Congress has given him or her. ............... This creates, in Gorsuch’s words, a “one-way ratchet” that results in the president accumulating more and more power at the expense of the legislature. .............. The administration is arguing that the courts shouldn’t second-guess the president and that if Congress wants to amend the statute that grants him the power to deploy the troops, it can. But is that a real check when Congress can’t act on its own absent a veto-proof supermajority? ........... Congress doesn’t “hide elephants in mouseholes,” as Justice Antonin Scalia put it. That’s the guiding metaphor of the major questions doctrine. But perhaps the Republican-appointed justices find a way to let Trump, a Republican president, tuck an elephant into his emergency statute so he can keep his tariffs, as his heart desires? ........... I’m not sure there are five votes for this problematic approach, however. Chief Justice John Roberts, another swing-ish vote, asked tough questions of both sides, and I don’t feel sure of where he’ll land. But he did say of the major questions doctrine, “It might be directly applicable.” .......... In so many rulings on the emergency docket, since Trump took office, the court’s conservatives have seemed willfully blind, obtuse even, about the power grab they are witnessing and abetting. ............ Trump’s insistence on blowing boats — and the people in them — out of the ocean based on no specific public proof of drug-smuggling and “narco-terrorism?” This is Trump’s made-up rationale for killing Venezuelans or other foreign nationals who come into the U.S. military’s cross hairs at sea. .............. Trump says he can do this because he has “determined” in a confidential notice to Congress that the United States is in a formal armed conflict with drug cartels. But the military is not permitted to intentionally target civilians who pose no threat of imminent violence, even suspected criminals. (I can’t believe I have to write that down, it seems so bedrock to human rights and the rule of law.) ............. The post-9/11 authorization for use of military force gave American forces the constitutional authority to conduct a military campaign against Al Qaeda and those who harbored it, and the Al Qaeda attacks on America gave us the right to respond under international law. We were on solid legal and moral ground. ........... By contrast, not only is there no congressional authority empowering Trump’s attacks, they also violate international law. Crime and war are not the same thing, and Trump is reacting to crime as if he’s responding to an imminent armed military attack on America. In reality, he’s striking suspected drug traffickers who are sailing very far from American seas who are the farthest thing from an imminent threat. .............. Don’t think for a moment that the only alternative to armed strikes is to simply let the boats sail away. The normal course of action is to stop a suspected drug boat, search it for drugs, and arrest and question its crew if incriminating evidence is found. That’s preferable on moral, legal and practical grounds as opposed to simply blowing them away from the air. It’s much more difficult to gather intelligence and information from dead men. ................. We’ve provided logistical and intelligence support and have even provided intelligence to other militaries in their efforts to shoot down planes suspected of carrying drugs (this program resulted in the horrific accidental killing of an American missionary and her daughter in Peru in 2001 — demonstrating, as if we needed more proof, that our intelligence is not always airtight). ............... But we’re dealing with something far beyond providing assistance to foreign governments when they use force. We’re directly attacking suspected criminals on the president’s sole authority. What is the limiting principle here?
If crime is now war, then who can’t the president kill?
............. Last week the Supreme Court gave us an interesting hint that it might be skeptical of Trump’s attempted National Guard deployments to Portland and Chicago. It ordered the parties in Trump v. Illinois — the case challenging the Chicago deployment — to file briefs addressing the question, “Whether the term ‘regular forces’ refers to the regular forces of the United States military, and, if so, how that interpretation affects the operation of 10 U. S. C. §12406(3).” This same question is also directly relevant to the Portland deployment, which was based on the same statute. ................. the statute Trump is using isn’t a first resort in the face of mild disorder, but rather a break glass in case of emergency last resort in response to a grave crisis. ............. I wonder what you think about the Trump administration’s refusal to pay about half of the SNAP benefits that are due to 42 million recipients this month. Trump also himself threatened to defy the court order to make the payments. He said on social media that people would only get their SNAP when the government shutdown ends. It’s his effort to pin blame on Democrats. This has to be terrible politics. It just has to be. He is literally taking food out of people’s mouths to score points. ................ Trump’s spokeswoman quickly dialed things back, saying the administration was complying with the court’s order. That reassurance is pretty thin, however, given that the promise is only partial payment, on some delayed timeline. I feel like I’ve seen this before, with all the foot-dragging and gamesmanship in the administration’s response to the judge who ordered the resumption of foreign-aid payments beginning in February. ................ even if Trump is just blustering, it is bad for the rule of law for the president to go around acting as if lower court orders are optional. They are not. These are the things that make this administration different from the others in my lifetime. It’s the reckless disregard of limits, and all for what — making poor people worry about where their next meal is coming from? ..................
the Trump administration’s core approach seems to be its own version of “move fast and break things.”
............... He’s trying to demolish the barriers against executive overreach as quickly and thoroughly as he demolished the East Wing of the White House. .......... Our system, however, was intentionally designed to slow things down, to filter legal reform through the legislative, executive and judicial branches. Different branches get a say in the executive’s actions, and that’s unacceptable to Trump. SNAP benefits and National Guard deployments are very different things, but they share in common Trump’s desire to move quickly and decisively against his political foes, without any intervention from the courts, or anyone else. ................ Yes, Democrats care about SNAP. But many recipients are part of Trump’s white, non-college-educated base. They are hurting. Which might help explain why Trump’s approval rating has been meaningfully slipping of late.
Almost Half of U.S. Imports Now Have Steep Tariffs Throughout the year, Mr. Trump has issued wave after wave of new duties, targeting almost every country in the world at levels not seen in roughly a century. The legality of the bulk of the new tariffs is now in jeopardy, as the Supreme Court on Wednesday began hearing a case that challenges Mr. Trump’s use of an emergency powers law to impose the levies. ............ If the court rules against the president, it will nullify a major tool in Mr. Trump’s trade agenda. He has used the law under question, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA, to impose tariffs on an estimated 29 percent of all U.S. imports, the Times analysis found. During oral arguments on Wednesday, justices appeared skeptical about Mr. Trump’s legal authority. ............. Mr. Trump has used a broad range of presidential authorities to issue tariffs this year. He has imposed industry-specific duties on steel, automobiles, lumber and other products, using a national security provision known as Section 232. Those tariffs — as well as levies issued under separate legal authorities, some of which stem from his first term — are not being challenged at the Supreme Court. ..........
That means that regardless of what the justices decide, nearly 16 percent of American imports will remain heavily tariffed.
............ China was already subject to protectionist tariffs that were imposed during Mr. Trump’s first term, then expanded under the Biden administration. These tariffs, which affect more than half the country’s exports to the United States, would also remain in effect regardless of the Supreme Court’s decision. ............ China’s trade-weighted average rate — more than 40 percent — is one of the highest in the world. ............ Mr. Trump used the emergency power law to issue tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico in the first months of his term, saying the countries had not done enough to stop the flow of fentanyl and migrants into the United States — what he deemed national emergencies. The fentanyl tariffs were then revised to cover only goods not entering under the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, a free trade deal that Mr. Trump signed during his first term. ........... Most imports from the United States’ two closest trading partners, however, qualify for the U.S.M.C.A. trade deal. Their goods now enter duty-free, side stepping the harsh new provisions Mr. Trump has enacted. ............. If the president’s power to wield tariffs is limited by the Supreme Court, the White House could wield these kinds of industry duties much more widely in the months to come.
Judge Berates Justice Dept. in Its Prosecution of Comey The flashpoint was the Justice Department’s failure to turn over seized communications from a confidant of Mr. Comey’s, Daniel C. Richman, a law professor at Columbia University.
