I love the point that Erickson makes about Republicans now lining up behind what is, in effect, a tax increase while Democrats oppose it. Ironic results like this are what supine fealty to the whims of one man will get you. However, I would push back against his assertion that Democrats would be worse for the nation on fiscal matters; our budget deficits having historically grown larger under Republican administrations.
Most of the resistance to Trump's tariffs has focused on their effect on consumer prices, largely overlooking the fact that though directly falling on only a few, they basically constitute taxes on the American people writ large. The main thing that I would add is that what Trump does today - arbitrarily declaring an emergency and thereby raising our taxes (through tariffs) without going through our elected representatives in Congress - President Ocasio-Cortez can do tomorrow.
As between the mere policy objectives that I have today and the Constitution that protects me always, I'll take the Constitution.
Trump continues to demonstrate he views his role as that of a CEO of USA rather than POTUS of USA. CEOs' negotiation power comes through economic leverage (and lawyers to a fair degree) to get what they want in a "deal". His ongoing efforts to tweak our global position via tariffs are like the person that only owns a hammer - everything becomes a nail.
Your quote "the only surprise in the decision being that it was not unanimous". Let me just say it upfront. Erick, you are an uneducated moron! Why don't you read the 2 dissenting supreme court justices's opinions. You might actually learn something. And your understanding of how tariffs actually work as they have been used by Trump shows you how ill informed you are on the subject. Yes some importers are going to have some financial difficulties initially, but letting the previous status quo just continue forever is the very definition of insanity!!!!
Which status quo are you talking about continuing forever, our having friends and allies (Trump tariffed friend and foe alike) or only being taxed by our elected representatives in Congress?
;-). Understood. Thought Mr. Wilson's comment a bit over the top talking at Erick like he's a teenager rather than a well-educated and well-read professional...
SCOTUS gave Trump an offramp from tariffs that would have let him save face. But noooooo!
I think once we get past primary season we'll see more Republicans recover their backbone, as then the congresscritters can focus on putting daylight between them and Trump. A lot of them are between a rock and a hard place, between primary challenges from MAGA and a general challenge from the Dems, especially in purple districts.
The Dems absolutely should focus on tariffs. Trump has gift-wrapped that for them. Focusing on the issues--at least one issue--is better than their historical approach of telling everyone that the GOP has cooties because they (the Dems) are embarrassed by their stances on various Omnicause issues.
During the Obama era, the DNC had a bumper sticker that literally said "Not A Republican". That's a virtue signal or a shaming tool, not a way to change hearts and minds. If that is literally the best the DNC can do, that's not much. https://www.pinterest.com/pin/207939707765129885/
Now, Trump will be gone on 20 Jan 2029, and may be neutered come this January. If the Dems win, and the tariff threat goes away, the Dems will be on the clock. I have yet to see anything from either party that suggests a compelling long-term vision that doesn't break the bank. And, as I have said before, any kind of pricey new program that the Dems might want--socialized medicine, etc. is going to run into fiscal reality very soon, and raising taxes to the max won't begin to cover it. Since the politics of addressing our fiscal situation is so toxic, neither party wants its fingerprints on it until events force everyone's hands. So the damage the Dems can do in the short term will be limited; if Congress goes Dem in 2026 it could very easily go GOP in 2028 if the Dems try to overplay their hand.
And before people start looking at what they are doing in the EU and Canada, there is a reason why GDP growth (and therefore tax base growth) has been flat since the Great Recession almost two decades ago. If the Dems want to FAFO and raise taxes beyond the Laffer max in the name of "inequality" or in an attempt to make the numbers work for some new social program, they will be biting off their noses to spite their faces, and the damage to economic growth and the tax base will soon be apparent.
I used to be freaking out that the Dems would come back and lock themselves into a generational majority like they did in the 1930s and have a pretty unfettered hand. But the reality is different now. In the 1930s, the Dems had the ability to broaden the (relatively-new) income tax base considerably and had plenty of room to push it towards the Laffer max, plus the repeal of Prohibition also enabled a big flood of excises. A lot of people don't realize that the income tax was a key requirement for Prohibition, to replace all of that excise tax revenue. Now, we've been running close to the redline on many dimensions.
Taxes are going to go up, like it or not. Social Security will cut benefits and/or be made less generous for those who played by the rules and saved for their retirements. And spending on the kind of stuff that DOGE was supposed to go after--as well as DoD MIC excesses--will come down. And we may see a buy-in program for Medicare to address the actuarially uninsurable, as well as to improve the risk pool by encouraging more younger (healthier) participants.
It's getting late, and to the point where whichever party is holding serve is going to have to make a bunch of unpopular decisions, and forget about goodies for their base. Unless and until they do that well and are seen as heroes, no party is getting a generational lock-in.
Erick, I'm beginning to part with you on the Democrats-would-be-so much-worse mindset. Until Trump, the Republicans only occasionally won when the electorate felt their wallets hit. Not because they stood for anything at all, but ONLY because they were the alternative. That doesn't have nearly the same appeal when they're in power and a clown show.
I remember the last few campaigns pretty well. Trump's strength is getting turnout by appealing to low information voters (the kind who makes a rallying cry of "He fights!!!" as he takes both sides of every issue) and those voting for the lesser of two evils (as I've been twice). They used to stand for something and haven't for a long time. We've seen that winning elections does nothing to restore that. Yes, the Democrats take us backward with undeclared sabotage, but maintaining the status quo between devolvements isn't good enough for me. How about you? Something needs to get their attention. They need to more when they win than wring their hands over how not to lose next time.
"Suffering is a great teacher, and now we'll all suffer together,"
-Herman Cain, immediately after Obama's re-election.
I just don’t buy this whole heartedly. Yes, tariffs are taxes and as we know, or should know, that the consumer pays all taxes. That said, what Erick and others are saying, makes it sound like we are paying 100% of the tariffs being charged and that’s just not true. Yes, tariffs are becoming more of an issue, but prices have not gone up in a linear fashion with tariffs. But you know what does? Income taxes!
“They understand, as multiple studies have shown, that 95% of the tariffs are paid by Americans.”
But 100% of Income Taxes are paid by you and me. The Dems and China are pushing the negative narrative about Tariffs. But, the Dems are all about raising income taxes and drank the Kool-Aid that the Rich absorb them and not the middle and lower income earners. And, that is partially true but the consumers pay 100% of corporate taxes just like tariffs, except income taxes affect 100% of products consumers purchase and Tariffs don’t. I like what it appears that what the tariffs are doing, but also believe they will be removed when their intended goal is reached or they become unreasonably damaging to us. I believe we have already seen some of that happen. So, how is dropping the tariffs and raising income taxes make any of what Erick said better? I have a real fear of becoming dependent on other countries friendly or not. That will doom us much quicker than these tariffs will. If I’m going to pay more tax, higher prices, and suffer some, I want it to be for more than just convenience! Don’t be like Canada and get in bed with someone that wants to control and make you there slave. And, we know China does and our so-called EU friends don’t care to the extent that they would see their money and security country go under. So, cancel the tariffs on Canada and watch them tariff the crap out of us and sell their oil to China and buy cheap Chinese goods until they become a satellite country for our biggest enemy. People it’s easy to give up and quit, but it’s hard to build and sustain.
Grudgingly, I have to admit that you make an interesting argument here. To the extent that an exporter cuts the price of his export in order for it to remain price competitive with domestic products, the exporter does - in effect - pay a small part of any tariff. However, you are looking at this aspect in isolation from other policy considerations too numerous to mention.
To begin with, if I am a domestic producer who sees the effective price of my competitor's product go up and I don't also raise my prices to the point where mine are just below his, I'm not a very good businessman. Hence, not only do consumer's get hit with the hidden tax that lies within a tariff, but higher prices on domestic products as well. Having never been a free trader myself, I am with you if you want to avoid becoming dependent on other countries for vital commodities and even if you want to protect key industries. As a matter of tax policy, however, the market distorting aspects of tariffs alone make them a relatively poor option.
I think a lot of people, including Erik, are missing the real point. We had hyper-inflation because Trump put ~1 trillion in the economy during COVID with PPP funds. Biden then put another ~1 trillion into the economy as a handout to left-wing orgs. Pumping that money into the economy, especially the unnecessary second trillion, caused the inflationary period.
Everyone is right that the tariffs are paid by the consumer. That money is going back into the treasury. The tariffs are a backdoor way--really the only way since it's political suicide--to pull money back out of the economy to tamp down inflation and put downward pressure on prices. So, yes, tariffs suck, and I hate the idea of putting tariffs on our best trading partners (I'm a free trade guy), but you can't exactly tell the public that you need them to hand over their hard earned money to fix the economy. In addition, the tariffs do have the additional benefit of decreasing our dependence on China, which is our #1 enemy that we continue to feed like we're blithering idiots wanting to commit suicide.
Now, whether pulling money out of the economy was a "master 3d chess plan" or just the beneficial outcome of an otherwise bad policy (except with China and a handful of other nations), I don't know. But what I can say is that a lot of the policies have unspoken purposes and you need to step back and look at the big picture. Case in point, Trump destroyed the H-1B visas for 2026 by requiring 100k per visa to enter the country. The admin made the case that the H-1B was being taken advantage of and Americans could use those jobs. Great! I agree with all that. Real reason? India wouldn't stop buying oil from Russia and was thus feeding the war w/ Ukraine. Over 70% of H-1Bs went to Indians in 2024. That's ~42,000 Indians NOT coming to the US to send money home to India. That's money not going into their economy. Now, India is still buying oil (albeit there have been some decreases), but it's February. Watch and see if they don't draw down toward the end of the year when Trump could extend that 100k/H-1B for another year.
I will side with Neil Gorsuch on this one. I did not read his dissent, but if any of you subscribe to the WSJ, today's editorial quotes from it: "The major questions doctrine is not ‘anti-administrative state,’” as Justice Kagan has asserted, Justice Gorsuch writes. “It is pro-Congress.” Right on!!!
I think Gorsuch and Barrett sort of got played on this one by the Chief Justice.
As you admit with respect to the dissents, I have not read the liberal concurrences. However, I really didn't have to because Robert's said everything that I understand them to have said where he writes "[I]f 'regulate' is as broad as the principal dissent suggests . . . then the other eight verbs in §1702(a)(1)(B) are simply wasted ink." The point here is that with Congress having specifically listed nine things that the President could do under the statute in question, the omission of tariffs from that list is presumed to have been deliberate. This doctrine of statutory construction is so old that there is even a Latin phrase describing it (originating as it does from a long bygone era when lawyers and judges actually used Latin phrases). I am almost certain that the liberal justices argued that the Court had to go no further than this in order to decide the case. By instead making this a "major questions" case, Roberts thereby got Gorsuch and Barrett on board. Do not misunderstand me here. If Gorsuch and Barrett did indeed get played, they got played into deciding the case correctly.
And Mark, I could not agree with you more on your final point. This decision was not so much about tariffs as it was about the balance of power between Congress and the President. Here, let me just adopt your words in my concurring opinion: "Right on!!!"
Yeah, the 3 liberal justices have wanted to leave the door cracked for giving a Dem POTUS sweeping powers. Gorsuch's smackdown of both sides is warranted.
I would believe in tariffs if they eliminated the income tax. It was thru import and export tariffs that the country used to run the government. That, is why government was kept small and manageable. Government size explode after the income tax was made legal.
Are tariffs not actually a consumption tax with a different name? The problem I have is that they target countries not items. If you want to sell more American cars, tariff imported cars. Hondas are built in a number of countries. If the car is built here with American labor, no tariffs. If imported, then apply the consumption tax to the sticker price. Same principle can be applied to almost any item that you can find on the shelves of our stores.
I would agree but have a feeling targeted tariffs would be too cumbersome to institute. My feeling is if it can be proven the exporting company is lowering the costs to unfairly hurt our production on specific items, I understand it. Take for example when South Korea was dumping memory chips into the market at absurd prices to hurt American and Japanese producers. But to across the board tax (sorry, "TARIFF") an entire countries imports is stupid. There are simply some things that American companies cannot or do not want to produce at a competitive level. For the most part American companies are not set up for small run and finishing of machined metal products. Nor do they want to be. Unless a company needs 1000's or hundreds of 1000's of an item, there is no interest. EPA rules have made metal finishing such as anodizing and chroming so expensive that many companies have closed up. It is actually in some cases cheaper to ship items out of the country to be chrome plated and returned than to pay local prices if you can even find someone willing to do batch runs.
If the Rs in congress had/would stand up like men instead of quit/lick boots, then this obsession of his could have been mitigated and the public, instead of considering a vote for Dems, would see there is sanity in the representatives, if not the president.
I'm particularly disappointed in Speaker Johnson and the Freedom Caucus. Both of these came to fruition during Obama to rekindle the flame of small government, separation of powers, and fiscal responsibility. They've completelyabandoned those principles, IMO. I have no confidence in the active GenZ "conservatives" who've grown up under Trump as head: they aren't conservative, are much less educated on what that word means, and lean towards an unconstitutional use of the government no less than the left.
The unconstitutional expansion of presidential power has happened with each presidency. Our stability comes from our form of government, where moving slowly is a feature; but with an empowered executive - the main fear of our Founders, I'd say - we've become unstable, in that every four years, there's too much upheaval. This phenomenon has affected American interests, too, not just international interests. With as much power as we have, an executive with too much flexibility is a serious problem for all.
When Parliament and the King backed off on the Stamp Act only to come back with a tax on tea, correctly seeing this as a ploy to get them to accept Parliament’s right to tax us in the first place, our forefathers promptly dumped that tea into Boston Harbor. Here, what the Court basically just told the President is that before you can tax us (by means of tariffs), we get a say in that through our elected representatives in Congress. Like Parliament and King George, Trump's response is to ignore this point; simply coming back with a different regimen of tariffs that suffer from the same fundamental defect.
That first generation of Americans was willing to risk their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor for what really is the same principle of not being taxed without our consent. Now, the Republicans lapdogs in Congress won't even risk their increasingly pathetic political careers by standing up and insisting upon the role that our forefathers quite literally laid down their lives to give them. Quite a contrast.
Yeah, let’s pretend the trade policies before this Trump term were working. Let’s pretend American workers weren’t losing jobs and getting cheap crap from all over the world. Let’s pretend too that the illegals weren’t taking jobs from Americans and weren’t putting American small businesses like roofers, painters, home improvement out of business because they wouldn’t hire illegals. Let’s pretend that inflation isn’t down and imports aren’t up. So, we pretend all that and go back to, what? Low and middle class Americans learning how to code? Tariffs may or may not work, may or may not be the answer but, I pray America never goes back to what Democrats and Republican Establishment types were selling.
Says the person who says America is exceptional. Mexico would be exceptional except for…….. Tunisia would be exceptional except for…… Even France. They tried but failed. The USA is exceptional. Why? Because of racism? De Tocqueville said it perfectly. What should happen, new immigrants to the USA shouldn’t be allowed to vote until their third generation, until they’ve assimilated. All races included
Neal, I agree. It would be one thing if all of our trade partners were playing fairly. America was being taken advantage of....and to me, it's important to bring manufacturing back home. Otherwise, we are dependent on China for everything. That seems like a bad idea, huh?
Unfortunately, trying to bring manufacturing back home is like trying to save the buggy whip industry after the advent of the automobile: ain't gonna work.
I would acknowledge that it is probably too early to judge the level of Trump's success in bringing manufacturing back to the U.S. However, the early numbers are far from encouraging.
Then take Kavanaugh’s dissent or, is he an acolyte and addle brained like Thomas? But not inconsistent like Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson. Or the Guiliani who was the main mouthpiece behind exposing the Hunter Biden laptop? Trump will find a way around another bad decision and get around a Congress that has no interest in working together or using it’s powers to do anything constructive.
What you don't get is that when Trump gets around Congress, he gets around us. You see, when Congress does something, they do so after public debate in which we (through means like these Substack comments) get to participate. And they have to listen, lest we vote them out of office. When (term-limited) Trump does something on his own, we have no choice but to trust him to do the right thing . . . as we might a king.
So now, he is going to get around Congress (thereby getting around us) AND he is going to get around OUR Supreme Court? How are you going to feel when the next Democratic president tries to do the same thing in combatting climate change, restricting gun possession or in doing any number of other things that conservative might well abhor?
Well the whole point is that those are dissenting opinions as in they are not the law of the land as interpreted by the majority. The law is that the president doesn't hold the type of tax / tariff power you seem to want him to hold and he will have to play by the rules as interpreted by the majority (not what Kavanaugh or Thomas think) whether or not you want him to have to abide to it.
Again - no offense, but I'd encourage you to read up on the psychological principles of "confirmation bias" and "cognitive dissonance" as it relates to how you view Trump's actions, supreme court decisions, desired executive authority for one president, tax policy when executed by one person, etc. I have noticed amongst my friends some real issues with these psychological phenomena as it relates to Trump for some reason.
Everyone that agrees with Trump had an -ism or a mental issue. But the dissenters are rational and totally balanced. I’m on America’s side and so is President Trump
As for me, I'm on the Constitution's side because that is where the collective genius of our founding forefathers lies. Trump isn't if he wants to tax us (through tariffs) without first running it past the People's elected representatives in Congress.
What Trump does today, President Ocasio-Cortez can do tomorrow.
I can tell that we won't agree on this and really am not trying to offend (in spite of what you may think)
Agreeing with Trump is one thing - I for example generally agree on the border. Agreeing on nearly every policy decision, action, executive order, international "strategy", etc. is something different and pretty quickly starts to veer off into the territory of the psychological phenomena I mentioned before. I have noticed that unfortunately once people decide that someone is "with them" they become susceptible to this type of thinking and it becomes both unpatriotic and counterproductive....
Fine - then let congress debate the merits of tariffs like any other tax policy as is their constitutional prerogative.
SC didn't rule tariffs to be illegal, simply tariffs by fiat where one bozo can change out tax policy willy nilly because he is angry at the tone of a world leader on a phone call who simply refused to kiss his ass....
No offense but, I’ll side with the Great Justice Thomas on this one:
"Congress authorized the President to 'regulate... importation.' Throughout American history, the authority to 'regulate importation' has been understood to include the authority to impose duties on imports."
"The meaning of that phrase was beyond doubt by the time that Congress enacted this statute... President Nixon’s highly publicized duties on imports were upheld based on identical language."
"Congress may delegate the exercise of many powers to the President... Congress has done so repeatedly since the founding, with this Court's blessing."
No offense taken, and in a similar vein no offense, but however brilliant Thomas may have once been, in his old age he has become nothing more than a pathetic Trump sycophant. He has not ruled against Trump on anything that Trump cares about and has waffled on his position repeatedly regarding executive power always ruling against Biden (i.e. student loans and others) and always in favor of Trump. I don't know why he became a pathetic Trump acolyte (possibly because his wife was radicalized into an insane 2020 elections conspiracy embracing lunatic who attempted to help Trump keep power), but it does seem to happen to aging conservatives who were otherwise admirable (see Rudy Giuliani)
The Nixon duties were different (time restricted / capped and targeted) challenged during a different time in the courts, and never ruled on by the supreme court. Trump's attempt at tariffs were carte blanche, willy nilly, uncapped, wholly unrestrained, and an attempt to fully take control of a power that resides in congress. It was obviously unconstitutional and the court has just ruled as such....
Thomas might just soon redeem himself in your eyes when the Court rules on Trump's executive order eliminating birthright citizenship. I'm expecting a unanimous Court to slap that shot into somewhere between the third and eighth rows. Were I a justice on the Court, I would write a one-word concurrence to the majority opinion:
We’ve been close to full employment for years now so very few workers have been unemployed for long. Only in 2025 did employment growth start to slow. Illegals were mainly taking jobs that Americans don’t want so the small businesses you refer to may have been unable to find legal workers for that reason. They were doing the right thing, legally, in not hiring illegals, but if that’s your only choice you do it or go out of business. As for inflation, it has been declining steadily since 2023. Tariffs do nothing to improve ANY of these factors.
Job growth in the last year of the Biden/Harris Administration was completely going to illegals. Those were all jobs Americans wouldn’t do? How many times have the jobs numbers been revised? They were jobs corporate America was more than willing to fill with illegals in order to avoid paying OT, filling out paperwork, etc. Take Market Basket, a grocery chain. They hired illegals, made them work 12-16 hours without OT, work days in a row without days off and never validated their paperwork. INS came in to check work authorization and Market Basket lost hundreds of workers who were illegals. Americans wouldn’t work grocery store jobs, especially young people looking for entry level jobs? Nonsense. Inflation couldn’t go higher after 9% under Biden/Harris. It hasn’t been closer to the 2% target as it is now in years.
Using isolated examples doesn’t really help. Yes there are companies that take advantage of illegal labor but an unemployment rate of 4% says that American citizens aren’t suffering unemployment because of it. The fact is that the growth of our economy outpaced the growth of the native workforce and resulted in a labor shortage that illegal immigrants filled. But regardless of all that, tell me how tariffs help in any way? That’s the point of this discussion.
But that’s not an isolated incident. That’s the point. Revenues are up, inflation is down, real wages are up and imports are up. All those things point to a different story than the one Erick and you are telling
After also taking into account the tax cuts in the Big Beautiful Abomination, revenues are not up. Inflation is not down to where it needs to be in order for the Fed to (rightfully) feel comfortable in dropping interest rates. Imports are up because they always go up in a growing economy. And while I might concede real wage growth, it would have been even greater, absent the inflation producing effect of tariffs.
Goldman-Sachs puts it at 86%. Sec Bessent denies it’s a tax at all. Sec Bessent points to the GDP and S&P 500 to point out, they’re not hurting the economy. The point of the tariffs is to boost US manufacturing. Building a plant takes time. It’s only been a few months. I was looking to buy a soft sided cooler backpack. There are coolers currently made in the USA but not soft sided coolers. How about the tariffs influence a company like Coleman to start making soft sided coolers in the USA? We’ve taken decades to destroy US manufacturing your way, let’s try something else to bring it back
His tariff loss is certainly creating a mess. As Democrat populists are already starting to point out, since it is said that the American people paid all the tariffs, refunding the tariffs to corporations is simply a gift to them from US taxpayers!
Well of course. But if tariff opponents are correct that basically all tariffs are passed along to the ultimate consumer, then companies that paid those tariffs have already been made "whole" (by their customers). So now refunding those tariffs would be a windfall for the companies, that already recouped the tariffs from consumers. The real answer, of course, is that companies ate a bunch of those tariffs by reducing their profits, or cutting costs elsewhere to absorb the tariffs. But it does pose interesting twists in cases where companies simply did pass along those costs to their customers.
Even assuming all that you've said, the increased hiring and investment that results from tariff refunds would stimulate the economy while the elimination (or even reduction) of tariffs would serve to lower prices. Except for the gaping hole that it blows in the federal budget (a rather big exception, I would concede), the ultimate effect of this decision could be a win-win.
That said, however, the point that you raise is a valid one. Through its silence on the matter of refunds, the Court has implicitly invited Congress to step up and do its job through legislation on refunds that might take your point into account.
I think most companies put off raising prices as long as they could, since doing so would cost them market share and therefore sales volume. As you stated, they cut expenses by laying off employees and/or just had a loss for the year. My company, I know, was resisting raising prices as much as possible until this case was resolved. In any case, the only way to repay the illegally collected tariffs is by refunding to the importer of record. If they then want to use those funds to stimulate sales by lowering prices, then consumers will indirectly benefit when making repeat purchases.
I look at tariffs as a resetting of trade. Yes it hurts some but in long term it’ll settle out and create fairer results for all.
I love the point that Erickson makes about Republicans now lining up behind what is, in effect, a tax increase while Democrats oppose it. Ironic results like this are what supine fealty to the whims of one man will get you. However, I would push back against his assertion that Democrats would be worse for the nation on fiscal matters; our budget deficits having historically grown larger under Republican administrations.
Most of the resistance to Trump's tariffs has focused on their effect on consumer prices, largely overlooking the fact that though directly falling on only a few, they basically constitute taxes on the American people writ large. The main thing that I would add is that what Trump does today - arbitrarily declaring an emergency and thereby raising our taxes (through tariffs) without going through our elected representatives in Congress - President Ocasio-Cortez can do tomorrow.
As between the mere policy objectives that I have today and the Constitution that protects me always, I'll take the Constitution.
Trump continues to demonstrate he views his role as that of a CEO of USA rather than POTUS of USA. CEOs' negotiation power comes through economic leverage (and lawyers to a fair degree) to get what they want in a "deal". His ongoing efforts to tweak our global position via tariffs are like the person that only owns a hammer - everything becomes a nail.
Your quote "the only surprise in the decision being that it was not unanimous". Let me just say it upfront. Erick, you are an uneducated moron! Why don't you read the 2 dissenting supreme court justices's opinions. You might actually learn something. And your understanding of how tariffs actually work as they have been used by Trump shows you how ill informed you are on the subject. Yes some importers are going to have some financial difficulties initially, but letting the previous status quo just continue forever is the very definition of insanity!!!!
Stupidest comment of the day.
yep.
Which status quo are you talking about continuing forever, our having friends and allies (Trump tariffed friend and foe alike) or only being taxed by our elected representatives in Congress?
Umm, Robert, you do realize you are addressing actual lawyer, right? Just checkin'
Speaking as a lawyer, lawyers can still be stupid. Just sayin'.
;-). Understood. Thought Mr. Wilson's comment a bit over the top talking at Erick like he's a teenager rather than a well-educated and well-read professional...
SCOTUS gave Trump an offramp from tariffs that would have let him save face. But noooooo!
I think once we get past primary season we'll see more Republicans recover their backbone, as then the congresscritters can focus on putting daylight between them and Trump. A lot of them are between a rock and a hard place, between primary challenges from MAGA and a general challenge from the Dems, especially in purple districts.
The Dems absolutely should focus on tariffs. Trump has gift-wrapped that for them. Focusing on the issues--at least one issue--is better than their historical approach of telling everyone that the GOP has cooties because they (the Dems) are embarrassed by their stances on various Omnicause issues.
During the Obama era, the DNC had a bumper sticker that literally said "Not A Republican". That's a virtue signal or a shaming tool, not a way to change hearts and minds. If that is literally the best the DNC can do, that's not much. https://www.pinterest.com/pin/207939707765129885/
Now, Trump will be gone on 20 Jan 2029, and may be neutered come this January. If the Dems win, and the tariff threat goes away, the Dems will be on the clock. I have yet to see anything from either party that suggests a compelling long-term vision that doesn't break the bank. And, as I have said before, any kind of pricey new program that the Dems might want--socialized medicine, etc. is going to run into fiscal reality very soon, and raising taxes to the max won't begin to cover it. Since the politics of addressing our fiscal situation is so toxic, neither party wants its fingerprints on it until events force everyone's hands. So the damage the Dems can do in the short term will be limited; if Congress goes Dem in 2026 it could very easily go GOP in 2028 if the Dems try to overplay their hand.
And before people start looking at what they are doing in the EU and Canada, there is a reason why GDP growth (and therefore tax base growth) has been flat since the Great Recession almost two decades ago. If the Dems want to FAFO and raise taxes beyond the Laffer max in the name of "inequality" or in an attempt to make the numbers work for some new social program, they will be biting off their noses to spite their faces, and the damage to economic growth and the tax base will soon be apparent.
I used to be freaking out that the Dems would come back and lock themselves into a generational majority like they did in the 1930s and have a pretty unfettered hand. But the reality is different now. In the 1930s, the Dems had the ability to broaden the (relatively-new) income tax base considerably and had plenty of room to push it towards the Laffer max, plus the repeal of Prohibition also enabled a big flood of excises. A lot of people don't realize that the income tax was a key requirement for Prohibition, to replace all of that excise tax revenue. Now, we've been running close to the redline on many dimensions.
Taxes are going to go up, like it or not. Social Security will cut benefits and/or be made less generous for those who played by the rules and saved for their retirements. And spending on the kind of stuff that DOGE was supposed to go after--as well as DoD MIC excesses--will come down. And we may see a buy-in program for Medicare to address the actuarially uninsurable, as well as to improve the risk pool by encouraging more younger (healthier) participants.
It's getting late, and to the point where whichever party is holding serve is going to have to make a bunch of unpopular decisions, and forget about goodies for their base. Unless and until they do that well and are seen as heroes, no party is getting a generational lock-in.
Everyone just needs to have patience. This too will pass and will be for the better. If you don't watch anything today, listen to this video from https://www.prometheanaction.com/ https://x.com/KillAuDeepState/status/2025879841032360343?s=20
Erick, I'm beginning to part with you on the Democrats-would-be-so much-worse mindset. Until Trump, the Republicans only occasionally won when the electorate felt their wallets hit. Not because they stood for anything at all, but ONLY because they were the alternative. That doesn't have nearly the same appeal when they're in power and a clown show.
I remember the last few campaigns pretty well. Trump's strength is getting turnout by appealing to low information voters (the kind who makes a rallying cry of "He fights!!!" as he takes both sides of every issue) and those voting for the lesser of two evils (as I've been twice). They used to stand for something and haven't for a long time. We've seen that winning elections does nothing to restore that. Yes, the Democrats take us backward with undeclared sabotage, but maintaining the status quo between devolvements isn't good enough for me. How about you? Something needs to get their attention. They need to more when they win than wring their hands over how not to lose next time.
"Suffering is a great teacher, and now we'll all suffer together,"
-Herman Cain, immediately after Obama's re-election.
I just don’t buy this whole heartedly. Yes, tariffs are taxes and as we know, or should know, that the consumer pays all taxes. That said, what Erick and others are saying, makes it sound like we are paying 100% of the tariffs being charged and that’s just not true. Yes, tariffs are becoming more of an issue, but prices have not gone up in a linear fashion with tariffs. But you know what does? Income taxes!
“They understand, as multiple studies have shown, that 95% of the tariffs are paid by Americans.”
But 100% of Income Taxes are paid by you and me. The Dems and China are pushing the negative narrative about Tariffs. But, the Dems are all about raising income taxes and drank the Kool-Aid that the Rich absorb them and not the middle and lower income earners. And, that is partially true but the consumers pay 100% of corporate taxes just like tariffs, except income taxes affect 100% of products consumers purchase and Tariffs don’t. I like what it appears that what the tariffs are doing, but also believe they will be removed when their intended goal is reached or they become unreasonably damaging to us. I believe we have already seen some of that happen. So, how is dropping the tariffs and raising income taxes make any of what Erick said better? I have a real fear of becoming dependent on other countries friendly or not. That will doom us much quicker than these tariffs will. If I’m going to pay more tax, higher prices, and suffer some, I want it to be for more than just convenience! Don’t be like Canada and get in bed with someone that wants to control and make you there slave. And, we know China does and our so-called EU friends don’t care to the extent that they would see their money and security country go under. So, cancel the tariffs on Canada and watch them tariff the crap out of us and sell their oil to China and buy cheap Chinese goods until they become a satellite country for our biggest enemy. People it’s easy to give up and quit, but it’s hard to build and sustain.
Grudgingly, I have to admit that you make an interesting argument here. To the extent that an exporter cuts the price of his export in order for it to remain price competitive with domestic products, the exporter does - in effect - pay a small part of any tariff. However, you are looking at this aspect in isolation from other policy considerations too numerous to mention.
To begin with, if I am a domestic producer who sees the effective price of my competitor's product go up and I don't also raise my prices to the point where mine are just below his, I'm not a very good businessman. Hence, not only do consumer's get hit with the hidden tax that lies within a tariff, but higher prices on domestic products as well. Having never been a free trader myself, I am with you if you want to avoid becoming dependent on other countries for vital commodities and even if you want to protect key industries. As a matter of tax policy, however, the market distorting aspects of tariffs alone make them a relatively poor option.
I think a lot of people, including Erik, are missing the real point. We had hyper-inflation because Trump put ~1 trillion in the economy during COVID with PPP funds. Biden then put another ~1 trillion into the economy as a handout to left-wing orgs. Pumping that money into the economy, especially the unnecessary second trillion, caused the inflationary period.
Everyone is right that the tariffs are paid by the consumer. That money is going back into the treasury. The tariffs are a backdoor way--really the only way since it's political suicide--to pull money back out of the economy to tamp down inflation and put downward pressure on prices. So, yes, tariffs suck, and I hate the idea of putting tariffs on our best trading partners (I'm a free trade guy), but you can't exactly tell the public that you need them to hand over their hard earned money to fix the economy. In addition, the tariffs do have the additional benefit of decreasing our dependence on China, which is our #1 enemy that we continue to feed like we're blithering idiots wanting to commit suicide.
Now, whether pulling money out of the economy was a "master 3d chess plan" or just the beneficial outcome of an otherwise bad policy (except with China and a handful of other nations), I don't know. But what I can say is that a lot of the policies have unspoken purposes and you need to step back and look at the big picture. Case in point, Trump destroyed the H-1B visas for 2026 by requiring 100k per visa to enter the country. The admin made the case that the H-1B was being taken advantage of and Americans could use those jobs. Great! I agree with all that. Real reason? India wouldn't stop buying oil from Russia and was thus feeding the war w/ Ukraine. Over 70% of H-1Bs went to Indians in 2024. That's ~42,000 Indians NOT coming to the US to send money home to India. That's money not going into their economy. Now, India is still buying oil (albeit there have been some decreases), but it's February. Watch and see if they don't draw down toward the end of the year when Trump could extend that 100k/H-1B for another year.
I will side with Neil Gorsuch on this one. I did not read his dissent, but if any of you subscribe to the WSJ, today's editorial quotes from it: "The major questions doctrine is not ‘anti-administrative state,’” as Justice Kagan has asserted, Justice Gorsuch writes. “It is pro-Congress.” Right on!!!
I think Gorsuch and Barrett sort of got played on this one by the Chief Justice.
As you admit with respect to the dissents, I have not read the liberal concurrences. However, I really didn't have to because Robert's said everything that I understand them to have said where he writes "[I]f 'regulate' is as broad as the principal dissent suggests . . . then the other eight verbs in §1702(a)(1)(B) are simply wasted ink." The point here is that with Congress having specifically listed nine things that the President could do under the statute in question, the omission of tariffs from that list is presumed to have been deliberate. This doctrine of statutory construction is so old that there is even a Latin phrase describing it (originating as it does from a long bygone era when lawyers and judges actually used Latin phrases). I am almost certain that the liberal justices argued that the Court had to go no further than this in order to decide the case. By instead making this a "major questions" case, Roberts thereby got Gorsuch and Barrett on board. Do not misunderstand me here. If Gorsuch and Barrett did indeed get played, they got played into deciding the case correctly.
And Mark, I could not agree with you more on your final point. This decision was not so much about tariffs as it was about the balance of power between Congress and the President. Here, let me just adopt your words in my concurring opinion: "Right on!!!"
Yeah, the 3 liberal justices have wanted to leave the door cracked for giving a Dem POTUS sweeping powers. Gorsuch's smackdown of both sides is warranted.
Stocks seem substantially down this morning. Hopefully this will trigger a lightbulb somewhere?
I would believe in tariffs if they eliminated the income tax. It was thru import and export tariffs that the country used to run the government. That, is why government was kept small and manageable. Government size explode after the income tax was made legal.
Are tariffs not actually a consumption tax with a different name? The problem I have is that they target countries not items. If you want to sell more American cars, tariff imported cars. Hondas are built in a number of countries. If the car is built here with American labor, no tariffs. If imported, then apply the consumption tax to the sticker price. Same principle can be applied to almost any item that you can find on the shelves of our stores.
I would agree but have a feeling targeted tariffs would be too cumbersome to institute. My feeling is if it can be proven the exporting company is lowering the costs to unfairly hurt our production on specific items, I understand it. Take for example when South Korea was dumping memory chips into the market at absurd prices to hurt American and Japanese producers. But to across the board tax (sorry, "TARIFF") an entire countries imports is stupid. There are simply some things that American companies cannot or do not want to produce at a competitive level. For the most part American companies are not set up for small run and finishing of machined metal products. Nor do they want to be. Unless a company needs 1000's or hundreds of 1000's of an item, there is no interest. EPA rules have made metal finishing such as anodizing and chroming so expensive that many companies have closed up. It is actually in some cases cheaper to ship items out of the country to be chrome plated and returned than to pay local prices if you can even find someone willing to do batch runs.
If the Rs in congress had/would stand up like men instead of quit/lick boots, then this obsession of his could have been mitigated and the public, instead of considering a vote for Dems, would see there is sanity in the representatives, if not the president.
I'm particularly disappointed in Speaker Johnson and the Freedom Caucus. Both of these came to fruition during Obama to rekindle the flame of small government, separation of powers, and fiscal responsibility. They've completelyabandoned those principles, IMO. I have no confidence in the active GenZ "conservatives" who've grown up under Trump as head: they aren't conservative, are much less educated on what that word means, and lean towards an unconstitutional use of the government no less than the left.
The unconstitutional expansion of presidential power has happened with each presidency. Our stability comes from our form of government, where moving slowly is a feature; but with an empowered executive - the main fear of our Founders, I'd say - we've become unstable, in that every four years, there's too much upheaval. This phenomenon has affected American interests, too, not just international interests. With as much power as we have, an executive with too much flexibility is a serious problem for all.
When Parliament and the King backed off on the Stamp Act only to come back with a tax on tea, correctly seeing this as a ploy to get them to accept Parliament’s right to tax us in the first place, our forefathers promptly dumped that tea into Boston Harbor. Here, what the Court basically just told the President is that before you can tax us (by means of tariffs), we get a say in that through our elected representatives in Congress. Like Parliament and King George, Trump's response is to ignore this point; simply coming back with a different regimen of tariffs that suffer from the same fundamental defect.
That first generation of Americans was willing to risk their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor for what really is the same principle of not being taxed without our consent. Now, the Republicans lapdogs in Congress won't even risk their increasingly pathetic political careers by standing up and insisting upon the role that our forefathers quite literally laid down their lives to give them. Quite a contrast.
Yeah, let’s pretend the trade policies before this Trump term were working. Let’s pretend American workers weren’t losing jobs and getting cheap crap from all over the world. Let’s pretend too that the illegals weren’t taking jobs from Americans and weren’t putting American small businesses like roofers, painters, home improvement out of business because they wouldn’t hire illegals. Let’s pretend that inflation isn’t down and imports aren’t up. So, we pretend all that and go back to, what? Low and middle class Americans learning how to code? Tariffs may or may not work, may or may not be the answer but, I pray America never goes back to what Democrats and Republican Establishment types were selling.
Says the person who says America is exceptional. Mexico would be exceptional except for…….. Tunisia would be exceptional except for…… Even France. They tried but failed. The USA is exceptional. Why? Because of racism? De Tocqueville said it perfectly. What should happen, new immigrants to the USA shouldn’t be allowed to vote until their third generation, until they’ve assimilated. All races included
Neal, I agree. It would be one thing if all of our trade partners were playing fairly. America was being taken advantage of....and to me, it's important to bring manufacturing back home. Otherwise, we are dependent on China for everything. That seems like a bad idea, huh?
Unfortunately, trying to bring manufacturing back home is like trying to save the buggy whip industry after the advent of the automobile: ain't gonna work.
I’ll remain positive on that!
I would acknowledge that it is probably too early to judge the level of Trump's success in bringing manufacturing back to the U.S. However, the early numbers are far from encouraging.
Then take Kavanaugh’s dissent or, is he an acolyte and addle brained like Thomas? But not inconsistent like Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson. Or the Guiliani who was the main mouthpiece behind exposing the Hunter Biden laptop? Trump will find a way around another bad decision and get around a Congress that has no interest in working together or using it’s powers to do anything constructive.
What you don't get is that when Trump gets around Congress, he gets around us. You see, when Congress does something, they do so after public debate in which we (through means like these Substack comments) get to participate. And they have to listen, lest we vote them out of office. When (term-limited) Trump does something on his own, we have no choice but to trust him to do the right thing . . . as we might a king.
So now, he is going to get around Congress (thereby getting around us) AND he is going to get around OUR Supreme Court? How are you going to feel when the next Democratic president tries to do the same thing in combatting climate change, restricting gun possession or in doing any number of other things that conservative might well abhor?
Well the whole point is that those are dissenting opinions as in they are not the law of the land as interpreted by the majority. The law is that the president doesn't hold the type of tax / tariff power you seem to want him to hold and he will have to play by the rules as interpreted by the majority (not what Kavanaugh or Thomas think) whether or not you want him to have to abide to it.
Again - no offense, but I'd encourage you to read up on the psychological principles of "confirmation bias" and "cognitive dissonance" as it relates to how you view Trump's actions, supreme court decisions, desired executive authority for one president, tax policy when executed by one person, etc. I have noticed amongst my friends some real issues with these psychological phenomena as it relates to Trump for some reason.
Everyone that agrees with Trump had an -ism or a mental issue. But the dissenters are rational and totally balanced. I’m on America’s side and so is President Trump
As for me, I'm on the Constitution's side because that is where the collective genius of our founding forefathers lies. Trump isn't if he wants to tax us (through tariffs) without first running it past the People's elected representatives in Congress.
What Trump does today, President Ocasio-Cortez can do tomorrow.
I can tell that we won't agree on this and really am not trying to offend (in spite of what you may think)
Agreeing with Trump is one thing - I for example generally agree on the border. Agreeing on nearly every policy decision, action, executive order, international "strategy", etc. is something different and pretty quickly starts to veer off into the territory of the psychological phenomena I mentioned before. I have noticed that unfortunately once people decide that someone is "with them" they become susceptible to this type of thinking and it becomes both unpatriotic and counterproductive....
Fine - then let congress debate the merits of tariffs like any other tax policy as is their constitutional prerogative.
SC didn't rule tariffs to be illegal, simply tariffs by fiat where one bozo can change out tax policy willy nilly because he is angry at the tone of a world leader on a phone call who simply refused to kiss his ass....
No offense but, I’ll side with the Great Justice Thomas on this one:
"Congress authorized the President to 'regulate... importation.' Throughout American history, the authority to 'regulate importation' has been understood to include the authority to impose duties on imports."
"The meaning of that phrase was beyond doubt by the time that Congress enacted this statute... President Nixon’s highly publicized duties on imports were upheld based on identical language."
"Congress may delegate the exercise of many powers to the President... Congress has done so repeatedly since the founding, with this Court's blessing."
No offense taken, and in a similar vein no offense, but however brilliant Thomas may have once been, in his old age he has become nothing more than a pathetic Trump sycophant. He has not ruled against Trump on anything that Trump cares about and has waffled on his position repeatedly regarding executive power always ruling against Biden (i.e. student loans and others) and always in favor of Trump. I don't know why he became a pathetic Trump acolyte (possibly because his wife was radicalized into an insane 2020 elections conspiracy embracing lunatic who attempted to help Trump keep power), but it does seem to happen to aging conservatives who were otherwise admirable (see Rudy Giuliani)
The Nixon duties were different (time restricted / capped and targeted) challenged during a different time in the courts, and never ruled on by the supreme court. Trump's attempt at tariffs were carte blanche, willy nilly, uncapped, wholly unrestrained, and an attempt to fully take control of a power that resides in congress. It was obviously unconstitutional and the court has just ruled as such....
Thomas might just soon redeem himself in your eyes when the Court rules on Trump's executive order eliminating birthright citizenship. I'm expecting a unanimous Court to slap that shot into somewhere between the third and eighth rows. Were I a justice on the Court, I would write a one-word concurrence to the majority opinion:
"Seriously?"
We’ve been close to full employment for years now so very few workers have been unemployed for long. Only in 2025 did employment growth start to slow. Illegals were mainly taking jobs that Americans don’t want so the small businesses you refer to may have been unable to find legal workers for that reason. They were doing the right thing, legally, in not hiring illegals, but if that’s your only choice you do it or go out of business. As for inflation, it has been declining steadily since 2023. Tariffs do nothing to improve ANY of these factors.
Job growth in the last year of the Biden/Harris Administration was completely going to illegals. Those were all jobs Americans wouldn’t do? How many times have the jobs numbers been revised? They were jobs corporate America was more than willing to fill with illegals in order to avoid paying OT, filling out paperwork, etc. Take Market Basket, a grocery chain. They hired illegals, made them work 12-16 hours without OT, work days in a row without days off and never validated their paperwork. INS came in to check work authorization and Market Basket lost hundreds of workers who were illegals. Americans wouldn’t work grocery store jobs, especially young people looking for entry level jobs? Nonsense. Inflation couldn’t go higher after 9% under Biden/Harris. It hasn’t been closer to the 2% target as it is now in years.
Using isolated examples doesn’t really help. Yes there are companies that take advantage of illegal labor but an unemployment rate of 4% says that American citizens aren’t suffering unemployment because of it. The fact is that the growth of our economy outpaced the growth of the native workforce and resulted in a labor shortage that illegal immigrants filled. But regardless of all that, tell me how tariffs help in any way? That’s the point of this discussion.
But that’s not an isolated incident. That’s the point. Revenues are up, inflation is down, real wages are up and imports are up. All those things point to a different story than the one Erick and you are telling
After also taking into account the tax cuts in the Big Beautiful Abomination, revenues are not up. Inflation is not down to where it needs to be in order for the Fed to (rightfully) feel comfortable in dropping interest rates. Imports are up because they always go up in a growing economy. And while I might concede real wage growth, it would have been even greater, absent the inflation producing effect of tariffs.
So you’re ok with American companies and consumers paying 96%
Goldman-Sachs puts it at 86%. Sec Bessent denies it’s a tax at all. Sec Bessent points to the GDP and S&P 500 to point out, they’re not hurting the economy. The point of the tariffs is to boost US manufacturing. Building a plant takes time. It’s only been a few months. I was looking to buy a soft sided cooler backpack. There are coolers currently made in the USA but not soft sided coolers. How about the tariffs influence a company like Coleman to start making soft sided coolers in the USA? We’ve taken decades to destroy US manufacturing your way, let’s try something else to bring it back
His tariff loss is certainly creating a mess. As Democrat populists are already starting to point out, since it is said that the American people paid all the tariffs, refunding the tariffs to corporations is simply a gift to them from US taxpayers!
No, it is paying them back for illegally seized money.
Well of course. But if tariff opponents are correct that basically all tariffs are passed along to the ultimate consumer, then companies that paid those tariffs have already been made "whole" (by their customers). So now refunding those tariffs would be a windfall for the companies, that already recouped the tariffs from consumers. The real answer, of course, is that companies ate a bunch of those tariffs by reducing their profits, or cutting costs elsewhere to absorb the tariffs. But it does pose interesting twists in cases where companies simply did pass along those costs to their customers.
Even assuming all that you've said, the increased hiring and investment that results from tariff refunds would stimulate the economy while the elimination (or even reduction) of tariffs would serve to lower prices. Except for the gaping hole that it blows in the federal budget (a rather big exception, I would concede), the ultimate effect of this decision could be a win-win.
That said, however, the point that you raise is a valid one. Through its silence on the matter of refunds, the Court has implicitly invited Congress to step up and do its job through legislation on refunds that might take your point into account.
I think most companies put off raising prices as long as they could, since doing so would cost them market share and therefore sales volume. As you stated, they cut expenses by laying off employees and/or just had a loss for the year. My company, I know, was resisting raising prices as much as possible until this case was resolved. In any case, the only way to repay the illegally collected tariffs is by refunding to the importer of record. If they then want to use those funds to stimulate sales by lowering prices, then consumers will indirectly benefit when making repeat purchases.