I want to be swept away by the normally Trump-friendly Supreme Court’s 6-3 ruling Friday against Donald Trump’s tariff regime.
I would love for it to become a landmark decision, although I fear that the ruling declaring Trump’s tariffs largely unconstitutional is more of a setback than defeat.
I want it to show that the Supreme Court is finally ready to call on at least a modicum of courage in standing up to Trump and for the rule of law. We’ll have a better idea of how much courage the justices actually have as the next few rulings come in. I want to be optimistic, but I can’t say I am.
Trump won’t defy the Supreme Court, I think. He hasn’t yet, exactly. But will he evade, avoid and brush up against defiance? You bet.
As soon as the ruling came down, Trump said he will impose new tariffs and that, whatever the court suggests, he won’t go to Congress for approval. I believe him there. He’ll no more ask for tariffs approval than he will for sending the bombers to Iran. He’s got other national-emergency-style laws to use on tariffs — or should I say, abuse? — that Justice Brett Kavanaugh helpfully laid out for him in his dissenting opinion.
Already, he has imposed a 10% tariff worldwide, against ally and enemy alike, although the law Trump is using — abusing? — for the new tariffs only allows for them to be imposed for 150 days. It’s almost funny — but only those lawyers advising the Trump administration are laughing — that many of the laws Trump is citing for his tariffs were passed by Congress after Watergate and meant to limit the president’s power.
By the way, Trump called Kavanaugh a genius, although not a stable genius notably, for his dissent, but you should hear what he had to say about those who voted against him.
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SUBSCRIBELook, I knew it was a good decision before I even read Chief Justice John Roberts’ majority opinion. Because Trump’s initial reaction was — surprise! — to go into full tantrum mode, saying he was “ashamed of those” who ruled against him, calling them “unpatriotic and disloyal to the Constitution.” For good measure, he suggested that a conspiracy was at work in the ruling, citing unnamed “foreign interests.” Surprisingly, no mention, though, of aliens, illegal or otherwise.
Two of the three conservatives who voted with the majority, and therefore against Trump, were Trump appointees — Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch. Trump called them “fools and lapdogs” and said they were an “embarrassment to their families.”
On the other hand, while he basically accused Barrett of being a traitor, he didn’t call her a “little piggy.”
Restraint?
Progress?
Here’s what the court didn’t do. It didn’t rule on whether the federal government would have to provide refunds to the importers who have paid the tariffs. If companies don’t know how much — if any — federal money is coming to them, how do they know what to do next?
The last estimates run to more than $200 billion in 2025 — more than a billion of it paid by Colorado businesses. Kavanaugh said in his dissent that the government “may be required” to refund billions of dollars, even if those companies had passed on the costs to consumers.
But as Trump pointed out in his news conference, it will probably take years for that to be worked out. We certainly don’t expect him to cooperate. And so, the many businesses that have complained about the chaos caused by the tariffs can expect more chaos, and more lawsuits, to come.
Chaos, after all, is the one constant in Trump/MAGA world.
As Gail Ross, chief operating officer at outdoor clothing company Krimson Klover, told The Sun’s Tamara Chuang earlier: “I literally had planned in terms of the cost and cost to my customers, I had a Plan A, B, C, D, E and F by the time we decided OK, we’re just going to take a guess and go with it. We paid a lot more in tariffs than we’ve ever had to pay before.”
Later Friday, though, she said it was all “murky” about whether refunds would be coming any time soon, if ever.
Murky, yeah. At minimum. My guess is that she’ll have to move on to Plans G, H, I, J, K and L before all is said and done. States, including Colorado, had already brought lawsuits fighting Trump’s tariffs and costs to consumers. Some companies had joined. And now comes the deluge.
Democratic politicians are calling for immediate refunds, even though they know there is little chance of that. It is, though, a good talking point for the November midterms. It’s still the economy, stupid, and now it’s the tariff-slowing economy.
You can argue, although few economists these days will, that tariffs are somehow good for the economy, which you may have noticed has slowed down over the last quarter.
What you can’t argue, though, is the chaos factor.
Trump’s tariffs, as we know, as countries around the world know, are anything but constant. They are more like a roller coaster — that’s on a good day — and sometimes like an erupting volcano.
Up, down, in between, no one knows. Meanwhile heads of businesses and states threaten to explode. And I don’t know have to tell you about you, the consumer.
Companies don’t know how to budget, whether to hire more employees or lay off more employees, or whether they can afford to start new projects. Many have been on hold ever since Trump first went after Canada and Mexico and China, declaring that fentanyl deaths in the United States were a national emergency that needed tariffs to solve.
And the uncertainty will only make matters worse for consumers, who are already getting the shaft. They can expect a bigger shaft coming their way when more companies are emboldened to refuse to swallow so much of the cost of tariffs and consumers have to pay the price.
Some consumers may remember Trump’s many promises he made in collecting the tariff revenue.
According to the right-leaning (but tariff-opposing) Cato Institute tracker, Trump had promised to pay for 11 different federal programs with tariff revenues. Like “warrior dividends” for military service members. Like a $2,000 rebate for low-income and middle-income Americans. He did give a $12 billion bailout to those America’s farmers who were being crushed by the tariffs. But as the New York Times reports, that money did not come directly from tariff revenue.
The Cato Institute calls those promises a fantasy and wonders if we’ll see more of the same in 2026. (Hint: We will.)
You’d think everyone would understand that by now, including the companies that caved in to Trump.
Doesn’t everyone understand that caving in to please Trump gets you nothing?
Everyone doesn’t, of course.
But if there’s some real good to come of this, maybe Trump’s “disloyal” employees on the Supreme Court will finally get it.
Mike Littwin has been a columnist for too many years to count. He has covered Dr. J, four presidential inaugurations, six national conventions and countless brain-numbing speeches in the New Hampshire and Iowa snow. Sign up for Mike’s newsletter.
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