You gotta hand it to him. I don’t know what “it” is on some days, but it’s something. Something to do with being completely insusceptible to the internal mechanism which delimits most people’s capacity to dwell in abject shamelessness.
On Monday afternoon in the US, Donald Trump dialed the demagogic propaganda knob up another several decibels by suggesting that a Supreme Court which rules against his use of emergency powers to address what critics say was never an emergency in the first place, is a Court which creates — wait for it — still another emergency.
If the Court decided to strike down Trump’s IEEPA tariffs, they’d also have to determine whether to demand the administration refund the duties collected in connection with those levies. That’s how it works when the government gets an unfavorable ruling in a tax case.
But, as The Wall Street Journal noted, “the scale of such a refund program” would in this case “be unprecedented, and the Court would have to take on faith that Trump would abide by an order to provide reimbursements.” That’s not a safe bet, and if he didn’t — provide reimbursements — America would plunge headlong into a Constitutional crisis.
An honest accounting of that refund would be somewhere in the neighborhood of $100 billion. The logistics would be challenging, but the optics would be even worse because guess who’d be getting a refund? Hint: Not foreign countries, because by and large, they didn’t pay the tariffs.
The administration would presumably have to set up a mechanism whereby US businesses could apply for the refund, a process which some legal experts worry could take years. Worse, small businesses might be unable to foot the bill for litigation should Trump deny their claims.
The (bad) publicity would make it abundantly clear that in fact, it isn’t foreign governments who pay the trade levies. It’s American businesses.
Of course, Trump would have only himself to blame for the mess. After all, he could’ve used 232 and 301 probes to justify the tariffs instead of IEEPA. That would’ve taken longer, but it wouldn’t have been as legally dubious. Now here we are.
Amid rampant speculation that the Court’s set to strike down the tariffs, Trump on Monday floated a much higher figure for the refunds: $2 trillion. “The actual Number we would have to pay back in Tariff Revenue and Investments would be in excess of $2 Trillion Dollars,” Trump said. “That, in itself, would be a National Security catastrophe.”
Trump, then, appears to be rolling up the sum total of the vague investment commitments included in his trade MOUs with other countries to arrive at a multi-trillion dollar “pay back” figure while seemingly alluding to executive action to address what he’s prepared to call a national security threat. Put differently: He might be laying the groundwork to defy a Supreme Court ruling by framing such a decision as an emergency “in itself,” as he put it.
Note also that Trump’s mention of a $2,000 “tariff dividend” (discussed at some length here on Monday) could be considered a type of extortion. “[It’s] pretty remarkable to promise to give away money you don’t know if you have the legal right to collect,” JonesTrading’s Mike O’Rourke remarked. “Now, if the Supreme Court rules against the IEEPA tariffs, it will be their fault the American people did not receive their $2,000 dividend,” he added. “That is one way to turn American citizens against another branch of government.”
You can’t make this stuff up, though it seems Trump now just makes everything up. I’m not sure even Spock would attempt a brain meld with him.
I wondered what it would be like, inside Trump’s head. Now we know it is a vast unknown, getting older and more senile by the hour.
I have little doubt Trump and his cronies will find a way to ignore SCOTUS and any ruling declaring his precious tariffs illegal under IEEPA, the rule of law is just a nuisance for them, sadly most people in America will not care.
This feels like the Liberation Day thing all over, as Trump attempts to exact his pound of flesh from all perceived enemies. TACO at 20% down on the Dow again?
H-Man, Ginsburg on Trump:
He has no consistency about him. He says whatever comes into his head at the moment. He really has an ego…
There’s a point at which even a guy like Teflon Don gets too far out over his skis. Ask Icarus. The more Trump implicitly threatens SCOTUS to do his bidding, the more likely SCOTUS is to rule sharply against him and anticipate his post-ruling shenanigans. The Court may have no choice but to explicitly describe various actions POTUS may contemplate taking and their consequences, as well as describing clearly Congress’s responsibilities. The nondelegation doctrine provides a foundation for SCOTUS to rule against POTUS, describe Congress’s past Constitutional laziness (or malfeasance) on tariff legislation, and highlight Congress’s responsibility to raise it’s game on tariffs and others matters of import when a wannabe autocrat becomes Pres.
Never mind. SCOTUS may rule against Trump on tariffs, but the conservatives on the Court don’t have the guts to describe the bigger autocratic picture as it is to Congress or POTUS.
A narcissist, who is so extreme, that he would never even recognize, let alone acknowledge, his narcissistic motivations. His only motivations for everything he does is power, recognition, revenge, diminishing others and money. If anyone/anything else benefits from his actions, that is just a byproduct.
Something weird must have happened during his upbringing.
I am almost finished reading “The Power Broker”- so this personality trait is front and center in my mind.
Your use of the word “weird” is spot on. Lots of room for imaginations to fill in the space.
Trump has a very simple remedy: have Congress approve his Tariffs.
He could have done it in the first place if was willing to be slightly less autocratic and slightly more willing to actually work.
I think we’re all being a little too naive about this Supreme Court. I am quite sure the partisan leadership of this court has done the calculation and understands the dangers of ruling against Trump as described above. They also seem to support the concept of autocratic rule in the US vis a vis the Unitary Executive theory. This makes me believe that there is no way they actually go through with ruling against Trump, the effects would be devastating to the current state of GOP politics of which they are major players and benefactors. They would rather allow illegality to continue than to destroy the project they’ve invested 5 decades into building.
All at our expense of course, but I doubt any of them will ever see it that way.
The zeitgeist is certainly leaning towards SCOTUS ruling against the president’s use of IEEPA for imposing blanket tariffs, so I wouldn’t bet against that outcome, at least not without odds. Still, one should always remember: John Roberts is a coward.
In the appellate courts, the government said tariffs should not be enjoined, because they could always be refunded if a higher court found them invalid. That surely has not escaped the Supreme Court’s attention.