Two Things Far More Important Than Tariffs
We learned crucial information from last week's Supreme Court ruling
There’s a lot of speculation now about the economic effects of the U.S. Supreme Court’s striking down of most of the illegal tariffs Donald Trump has levied against other nations. Most importantly, we learned the Supreme Court is still an independent branch of the federal government.
The sad and semi-unbelievable thing is that until Friday’s ruling, we couldn’t be sure. They had seemed to be slavishly supportive of everything the Creamsicle dictator wanted to do. But it turns out that while they’ll evidently let him do anything in his sphere as president, he can’t just usurp the powers the Constitution reserves for Congress.
That’s why they declared the tariffs are null and void. Trump, of course confirmed something else for us: He has the emotional maturity of a and a half year old. I can be precise here because we recently had a child that age in our family, and he was a handful when he was tired or thwarted in something he wanted to do. He is now six and much more mature, which Trump is unlikely ever to be.
Other presidents who didn’t like the way the highest court ruled mainly put a game face on, at least in public. Andrew Jackson supposedly once said, “the chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it,” but that quote, if real, only surfaced long after he was dead, and Jackson, whatever he did say, didn’t go after John Marshall.
Trump, however, publicly insulted the six justices who ruled against him, said he was “ashamed of certain members of the court.” He seemed especially angry that two of the justices he’d appointed in his first term didn’t support him.
After all, he has given Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch lifetime jobs, and it was as if they had said “you’re not the boss of me,” and he and the world knew there was nothing he could do about it. Trump predictably lashed out at them, calling those who opposed his will “very unpatriotic and disloyal to our Constitution,” a document it’s very clear he has never read.
If you knew anything about cranky four-year-olds, you weren’t surprised that he immediately imposed a 10 percent tariff on other countries, something he has the power to do for 150 days. The next day he raised that to 15 percent. He said he would refuse to refund any of the money improperly collected, daring someone to challenge him and in his most bizarre utterance, said bitterly “I tried to be a good boy,” in the hope the justices would give him what he wanted as a reward.
You can bet he will make all of us suffer for this in some way. We have two years and eleven months to endure more of this, if it is endurable.
Happy Sunday.
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Many of the legal eagles worth tracking on the radar had been predicting that this type of a decision was due soon. Indeed, the justices are the ones with a job for life, but their recent rubber-stamping of Trump's agenda had made it apparent that they might be headed for irrelevance. The truth is, even if he is not removed from government, most of them are going to be around after he's dead, no matter what. They needed to re-assert their power, and reaffirm the separation of powers, and the opinion seems to address both of those things. Barrett's opinion touches explicitly on the duties and authority of both the judicial and the legislative branch (OK, yeah, sure, it pretty much had to, given the nature of the case, but she spelled it out really plainly for the Elementary-Schooler-in-Chief).
It should never be the case that the two words which best describe the President of the United States are "impudent" and "petulant," but here we are. He needs some time in the time out chair.
No surprise, meanwhile, we have a "wag the dog " moment readying itself in the middle east. Parliamentary forms of government have a vote of no confidence. We have the 25th Amendment. I guess the Founding Fathers never thought we the people would elect a convicted felon/mental patient.