The following is a lightly edited transcript of the January 26 episode of The Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.
Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
Any day now, the Supreme Court is expected to rule on President Trump’s tariffs. The legal case against them is strong, in part because he’s justified them by claiming an economic emergency that doesn’t exist. But with this high court, you never know. However, it turns out that Trump has already basically revealed right out in public, again and again, that the rationale for his tariffs is bogus. He’s done this by using tariffs to threaten numerous people for all sorts of other reasons, meaning they have nothing to do with any economic emergency. And Trump did this again during his speech in Davos. MS NOW’s Steve Benen identified this odd pattern in a really good piece, so with a ruling coming at any time, we’re talking to him about all this today. Steve, good to have you on.
Steve Benen: Thanks, Greg, it’s great to see you.
Sargent: So let’s start here. During his Davos speech, Trump told a really odd story about how he decided last year to impose 30 percent tariffs on imports from Switzerland. At one point he spoke with Switzerland’s Karin Keller-Sutter. She rubbed him the wrong way, and he hiked the tariffs to 39 percent.
Subsequently, he reduced the tariffs after a Swiss delegation of industry figures visited. As one report put it, they were literally bearing gifts: a Rolex, a personalized gold bar, and loads of flattery, as Axios put it.
Donald Trump (voiceover): But I brought it up to 30 percent. And the, I guess, Prime Minister, I don’t think President, I think Prime Minister called a woman. And she was very repetitive. She said, No, no, no, you cannot do that—30 percent. She just rubbed me the wrong way. I’ll be honest with you. And I said, “All right, thank you, ma’am. Appreciate it.” “Do not do this.” “Thank you very much, ma’am.” And I made it 39%. And then all hell really broke out. And I was paid visits by everybody. Rolex came to see me. They all came to see me. But I realized, and I reduced it. Because I don’t want to hurt people. I don’t want to hurt them. And we brought it down to a, you know, lower level.
Sargent: Then the administration announced that the tariffs would be cut to 15 percent. So Steve, it’s interesting that Trump is deciding to set tariff rates based on whether this female leader’s voice annoyed him and then on the level of flattery and tribute he’s receiving. That’s not how it’s supposed to work, is it?
Benen: Yeah, you know, when you put it that way, Greg, it sounds bad. I mean, look, we have a situation here in which the White House has said for about a year now that Donald Trump needs unilateral power. He needs to be able to impose arbitrary tariffs on U.S. trading partners—without congressional approval—in response to “emergency” conditions that necessitate this dramatic action.
And so with that in mind, you would like to think that the White House has an actual emergency in mind, that this emergency exists. And yet here we are seeing Donald Trump repeatedly and publicly explaining that as far as he’s concerned, there really isn’t an emergency. There are just whims, his own personal preferences. He’s giving away the game on purpose in public in ways that we can all recognize.
Sargent: Well, yes, I think we should quickly recap Trump’s case for the tariffs. He’s claiming the authority under a 1977 law to invoke an emergency and impose the tariffs unilaterally, as he said.
The emergency that they’re citing is our trade deficits. That’s the emergency, but that’s nonsensical. By the language in the law that we’re talking about here, there’s no conceivable way that trade deficits constitute the sort of emergency he’s talking about. Can you talk a little bit about how absurd that is?
Benen: Well, sure. I mean, first of all, let’s emphasize that trade deficits in and of themselves are not a problem. I mean, you... you and I have trade deficits with our grocery store. You know, we go to them, we buy their groceries. They never buy our groceries.
Well, but that’s okay. That’s... that’s just economics. We get... we get food. They get our money, and then the world keeps going on. It’s not a problem, then, necessarily, that... that this trade deficit is somehow this boogeyman that we have to be panicked about. So right off the bat, that’s an important thing to emphasize.
Even beyond that, the trade deficit is shrinking. And at no point do we get to a point where it’s considered a crisis that necessitates giving the president this unilateral power.
Congress has, under the Constitution, the authority over tariffs... [it] is in Article I. It does not extend Article II in the presidency. And so I think given that, with that in mind, given those circumstances, there’s a reason that most legal experts think that the president is likely to lose at the Supreme Court because the law just isn’t on his side.
Sargent: Right. I think we really need to underscore that trade deficits are not an economic emergency, right? We’ve had them for a very long time, and no economist thinks it’s an emergency. But what Trump’s really testing here is his power to say something’s an emergency, even when it’s complete nonsense.
And I think that’s how the administration itself and the people around Trump—particularly the more kind of monarchical of his advisers, the ones who want a monarch—really conceive of this again and again on other fronts, including immigration. They’re testing their ability to just claim that reality is some other thing than it actually is and daring the courts to say the president can’t say that.
Benen: Right. Yeah. And I think that that came up repeatedly in the context of the oral arguments at the Supreme Court. And it’s something that I think Trump’s lawyers just struggle to defend because really, frankly, it’s indefensible.
And so with that in mind, I think that the White House is increasingly panicked about the likelihood of a defeat at the Supreme Court. And so we’ve seen Donald Trump lobbying justices by way of his social media platform, raising the specter of an economic calamity, of national security crises, if the White House ends up losing. And yet if the justices honor the law as it’s written, there’s no realistic chance that Donald Trump’s going to succeed when the ruling comes down.
Sargent: Well, you put your finger on it there, man. We’ll really find out, I guess, whether the justices are going to honor the law or not. But anyway, you notice this pattern, which is really striking.
Over and over, Trump has threatened tariffs for all kinds of reasons: against Brazil for prosecuting one of his allies; against European countries for not supporting his desire to annex Greenland; and even against France after Emmanuel Macron declined to join his “Board of Peace” for Gaza. Those don’t sound like economic emergencies. So what gives there, Steve?
Benen: Well, I mean, I’m glad that you put it that way because, you know, there’s this pretense. There’s this idea that somehow the White House is going through the motions pretending that there are these emergencies. But Donald Trump is so far gone, is so wrapped up in his own delusion, that he forgets that he’s supposed to maintain that pretense.
I think he genuinely just doesn’t remember that he’s supposed to stick to certain talking points in order to keep up appearances, in order to make it seem as if the emergency is legitimate, even though it’s not, even though we know it’s not. And he routinely, with increasing frequency, admits that it’s not.
Now, if the justices are paying any attention to all of this, if justices are taking note of the fact that Donald Trump is effectively confessing in public that the entire rationale for his policy is a sham, well, then he has a serious problem on his hands.
Sargent: Yeah, I think that there’s not really a lot of clarity around whether the court will see it that way, right? We just don’t know whether this has any actual legal significance, particularly with this court.
Benen: True. We do not know. In fact, especially with this court, it’s an unpredictable environment. I think that for those of us who are concerned, for those of us looking at the reality, for those of us looking at the developments as they’re unfolding in public and who are aware of the law and who heard the oral arguments and have seen all the presentations, we realize that there are certain unavoidable facts.
The White House is claiming an emergency that doesn’t exist, and Donald Trump is forgetting to maintain the pretense that those emergencies are real. The result of that is that he’s effectively, if not literally, giving away the game.
Sargent: Well, I want to bring in Mike Johnson here because you mentioned a little earlier that what’s at stake is the president’s constitutional powers. Now, Congress is what’s authorized to tax, right? And that’s at issue in this case. Here’s Mike Johnson talking about whether he’s going to legislate on Trump and the tariffs.
Mike Johnson (voiceover): I have no intention of getting in the way of President Trump and his administration. And he has used the tariff power that he has under Article II very effectively. The Article I branch, he has not exceeded his authority. There’s no reason in my view for the Article I branch to intervene in that.
Sargent: Yeah, I don’t know, Steve. That sounds like evasion to me.
Benen: So here’s the thing to keep in mind. Here’s what I [want] your listeners to keep in mind, because this is something that a lot of people don’t necessarily remember, which is that Mike Johnson has described himself for years as a “constitutional lawyer.”
Right now, he’s not just someone who dabbles in the law as part of his political career. He is someone who quite literally describes himself as an expert on matters of constitutional law, talking about this Article II power that the president has used very effectively.
Except there’s one nagging problem with that. There is no Article II tariff power. Mike Johnson just referenced this constitutional provision that does not exist in reality. Don’t take my word for it, listeners. Look it up. It’s [not] in Article II. It’s in Article I.
You can see the fact that the power is vested in the hands of lawmakers in the legislative branch, not in [the] executive branch. So the fact that the House speaker is taking this hands-off approach, saying: Well, the president can just do as he pleases because he’s doing it so well; the Congress is just going to take a backseat on purpose. That’s not just ridiculous and it’s not just misguided. It is completely antithetical to the constitutional system that he’s supposed to be working under.
Sargent: Well, look, one of the hallmarks of Trumpism is that all the corruption is right out in the open. His own voters are supposed to thrill to this. He is essentially saying in every which way: You’re damn right I’m corrupt. I’m going to be corrupt for you.
And so in some ways, this has kind of worked for him in that at this point, Trump can do all sorts of appallingly corrupt things and engage in endless self-dealing and the press basically yawns. But I really wonder whether this might be the place where that catches up with him.
This one is so blatant and the law is so clear that you would think that confessing to his actual rationale for tariffs in public would at this point actually not work for him anymore. Am I... am I being too optimistic?
Benen: I don’t think you are. And in fact, I think that what we’re seeing is the point at which a variety of lines intersect. On the one hand, there’s a legal problem because these “emergencies” don’t exist. On the other hand, there’s a political problem because the American public in general hates these tariffs, recognizes the fact that it’s pushing prices up and that it’s becoming a drag on the economy.
And on the other hand, there’s also the legislative element to this. The reason that Donald Trump is not going to Congress to get the authority that lawmakers could give him is that he knows, just as we know, that Congress would not give him the power despite the fact that Republicans are in the majority in the House and the Senate. And so when you have those three intersecting lines, what you have is a breakdown that I think is ultimately going to create a doomed policy that is unraveling before our eyes.
Sargent: Well, I think there’s another dimension to the involvement of Congress here that we should just mention in passing, which is that the law that governs whether Trump can do this—the one that Trump himself is invoking, right?—the 1977 statute was written by Congress.
So Congress actually put restrictions on the president’s ability to levy tariffs. And so that just sort of makes the whole thing even more comical if you really think about it. He’s just giving the middle finger to Congress in every which way, and Mike Johnson is just kind of rolling over and taking it.
Benen: Well, yeah, I remember early last year, I was talking to a congressional staffer who used this one phrase that really stuck in my head. He said that Congress was being treated like a doormat.
And that really resonated with me because over the course of the coming weeks and months that followed, Donald Trump and the White House repeatedly proved that they were treating Congress like a doormat—ignoring it, treating it as an afterthought, if it’s treated as a thought at all.
And so one would think, under just common sense, that congressional leaders—if for no other reason than institutional pride, to save themselves a degree of embarrassment—would at least get up on their hind legs once in a while and show that they’re co-equal members of a co-equal branch of government.
But Mike Johnson and his fellow GOP leaders on both sides of Capitol Hill have done exactly the opposite. They basically rolled over and said that the White House can do as it pleases and Congress will do effectively, if not literally, nothing. So, yeah, I mean, this is a breakdown in the Madisonian model of government. And the only way for this to change is for either them to wake up or for them to lose.
Sargent: Well, I’ll tell you, what makes it even more baffling is that most of these Republicans, at least I think, actually oppose the tariffs. So Donald Trump came in and he kind of hijacked the Republican Party. And the story we’re always told is that he’s breaking with the Republican Party on economics in the sense that he’s much more populist.
Now that story is mostly bullshit in the sense that, you know, he... when he came into office in his first term, one of his immediate things was to try to wipe away the Affordable Care Act, even though he had promised universal health care in the campaign. And then he cut taxes for the rich in his first and second terms.
So the populist story is largely bullshit. But here’s a case where there’s an actual disagreement between the president and many Republicans in Congress: they tend not to like tariffs at all. And yet they’re still not even asserting their own power here. It’s just... the whole thing’s extremely strange.
Benen: It is. And you know, that’s an important element to this because—and we alluded to this a few minutes ago—you know, the courts that have heard this case already have said, in no uncertain terms: Just go get the authority. Just go to Congress, get the authority that you need, and you can go ahead and impose these tariffs accordingly.
So why doesn’t the White House do that? Why doesn’t Trump just go and tell congressional Republicans: Give me the authority?
And it’s because he knows that he’d lose. He knows that his grip on power isn’t nearly as strong as it has been advertised, as [it] has been hyped. He knows that congressional Republicans, given their very narrow majorities in both chambers, would simply say: No, we’re not doing this—that this policy is too dumb, too unpopular, and too destructive.
And so yeah, I mean, on the one hand, Congress is rolling over and allowing this to happen. But on the other hand, you know, if given the opportunity, they wouldn’t roll over. They would say: No, we’re not doing this because it’s stupid.
Sargent: And one last point, Steve, that I think eludes a lot of people: Republicans in Congress are going to pay the political price for the tariffs. That’s the funniest thing about this whole thing. Probably they’re going to lose the House and possibly the Senate. Longer shot, obviously, but... it’s very, very clear that affordability is an enormous issue in these elections.
Republicans lost a string of elections in 2025 over this very thing. They’re probably going to lose the House over this very thing. And the reason for this, at least in part, is Trump’s tariffs. They have, you know, hit a lot of consumers and driven up prices. And so in every which way, Republicans are rolling over and Trump doesn’t pay any price for this. They do, yet they’re still accepting it.
Benen: Yeah, I’m looking forward to the fall when I hear GOP incumbents, if they do a town hall, if they do interviews and so forth, they get asked: Well, what did you do when tariffs were increasing the prices for consumers across our state, our district, and so on? What did you do?
And the answer is going to be: Well, I just let Donald Trump do as he pleased.
Well, you know what? When Donald Trump [has] a 39 percent approval rating, and prices are... [the] affordability crisis gets worse... voters are probably not going to respond particularly well to that message, but we’ll see. Time will tell.
Sargent: Well, right. We should point out that, yes, he actually polled at 40 percent approval in a New York Times poll, which is really the gold standard of polling. And so I think there’s a very real likelihood that his approval rating is in the 30s by the time Republicans are faced with an election and forced to defend the tariffs. And I think that’s going to be pretty tough.
Benen: I do too. And I would not want to be in their shoes right now.
Sargent: To circle back to where this all started, Trump just revealed yet again that the whole thing is really absurd. So we talked earlier about how he recently threatened tariffs on European countries because they weren’t letting him annex Greenland.
And then, as soon as they started entering into talks with Donald Trump about giving him some sort of fig-leaf access to Greenland that would allow him to claim that he won something, he then immediately said the tariffs are on hold. So what happened to the economic emergency, Steve?
Benen: It was an elusive emergency. You know, it was here one minute, and the next thing you know, you turn around and the emergency is gone. I don’t know. It’s either, you know, check between the couch cushions. Maybe he dropped it.
Sargent: Yes. Well, just to close this out: if he can get away with this—this buffoonishly and obviously ridiculous...—and the entire Republican Party lets him get away with it, and the Supreme Court lets him get away with it, where the hell are we?
Benen: Yeah, I think under those circumstances, we would be looking at a breakdown of American governance at crisis levels that should cause widespread concern and real anxiety among [the] American people, because there is no defense for those circumstances. There is no way to rationalize. There’s no way to defend. There is no way to see this as anything other than a genuine crisis of American governance.
Sargent: Because the tariffs, when it really comes down to it—and they’re rarely described this way in the press—are an enormous abuse of power, and no institution in American governance is stopping him from doing it. That’s what the story would be if at the end of the day the Supreme Court upholds the tariffs after he’s essentially given the middle finger to the entire world about them.
Benen: Yeah, my hope and expectation is that the Supreme Court will not go along with that one, will not follow that path, will realize that there needs to be a check because they still have some responsibilities to the law, despite recent history. But if I’m mistaken, then you and I should talk again, and we will commiserate accordingly.
Sargent: Sounds like a great plan, Steve Benen. Thanks so much for coming on, always great to talk to you.
Benen: Thank you.
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