> What was the point of these tariffs? It has never really been clear.
The Biden administration let in 5 trillion migrants who brought all the world's fentanyl and ate all the dogs and cats in the country and put Bolsonaro in prison and refused to accede Greenland and Canada to the US.
I think you have it right. The tariffs SCOTUS struck down granted the President enormous power to be wielded internationally and domestically. And personally.
Trump's response and Vance's words have to be seen in that light.
Trump's enactment of a new tariff that evades this ruling is a public assertion of power, not a considered economic policy. Not even a very meaningful power move, in a literal sense.
However, consider that he was told that he could have his tariffs, all he had to do was ASK Congress. Setting aside the political problem (lots of Republicans do not want to run on their tariff vote in November), a big part of his point is that he doesn't ask. He has unbridled power, both for personal satisfaction but also for wheeling and dealing.
Vance's statement that "This is lawlessness from the Court" however ought not be written off as merely ridiculous. It sheds light on Vance himself: The hell with Originalism or Living Constitutionalism or Political Process Theory, the law is whatever best serves the purposes of the president, the central authority. The president is the law; thus a ruling limiting his power is lawless.
Sure, it was Vance's job as VP to denounce the decision, but I think a lot of educated folk have their head in the sand when it comes to this guy, seeing him as less culturally alien than Trump. If we as a country fall for his more educated demeanor, I predict we will remember 2026 as the good old days.
I find it scary how we now just "gloss over" the President of the USA declaring the suprem court "under foreign influence" and the VP declaring their decision "illegal".
Is there any modern precedent for this kind of executive power attack on the other powers?
Probably if we look the 1930s US we can find something in discourse, given reactions against New Deal etc. but it's certainly nothing like anything since WWII... (except amongst Bircher Fringies)
I agree that accumulating power is the primary purpose of the tariffs, but Trump does use that power for personal enrichment, so I view your third possibility, personal enrichment, as a corollary of his quest for more power.
And that's why Trump won't back down on tariffs -- once he does, it means his power has peaked, and that other people don't have to kowtow to him, pay him tribute (like that stupid plane), or generally follow him as if he were the second coming of God.
The predictive ability of "how would a toddler behave" holds up pretty well. "Someone told Trump no? He's going to rage and bluster and try again. 10% no 15%!" Even a teenager could find a way to sulkily pretend he didn't lose: "SCOTUS said that Congress didn't use the right magic language to give me the powers our country needs me to have and that Congress clearly intended, but we can do things the hard way, sure."
But the "personal power" thing is certainly predictive, too! He could probably get the GOP Congress to simply grant him these powers. Little Mike Johnson is perfectly happy to kowtow even to the extent of redefining the meaning of the word "day" if it makes Daddy Donald temporarily happy. But a) Trump can't acknowledge that he's being given powers (notice when he talks, that he always simply HAS powers, he's never GIVEN them by other branches) and b) that "probably" is a potential humiliation at the hands of the likes of Reps Massie or Bacon, which he can't bear.
The only part I would argue is that he’s wielding the power more like a Sledge-O-Matic than a scalpel. Yes, he’s aiming at particular targets, but there’s no precision! He’s splattering crap in every direction. How many more days of this do we have to endure?
I agree with you, but Orin Cass in that podcast debate with you was claiming the benefits to US manufacturing wouldn’t show up for years, and we would expect short term pain right? I mean, I don’t want to destroy the economy for years just to say “told you so” to Orin Cass but I do think you misrepresent his claim here.
Although if you need to maintain tariffs for years, past the end of the administration, in order to see their benefits, you need to develop a consensus around them. RIght now, I expect tariffs to move around randomly during Trump's term as he uses them to bully countries, and then disappear once he's gone. That's hardly going to motivate changes in investment plans that may take a decade to pay off.
"What was the point of these tariffs? It has never really been clear. Trump’s official justification was that they were about reducing America’s chronic trade deficit."
They could never have been about that (although it is possible that Trump imagined it was possible). Trade deficits are a macroeconomic phenomenon governed by the surplus of investment over saving. Only to the extent that tariff revenue slightly reduce the fiscal deficit, do tariffs affect the trade deficit.
Trump Admin is channeling Trump's obsessions - shouldn't even say we or USA...
Point of Tariffs of course is Trump genuinely himself believes, all the way back to the 1980s and the reaction against Japan at the time that a protectionist program would cause the USA to become the idealised 1950s-early 1960s image of America that he and a certain MAGA faction loves.
"although the tariffs had their origin in 1990s-era worries about trade deficits, they ended up as a way to make the Presidency more like a dictatorship. That is almost certainly why the Supreme Court struck the IEEPA tariffs down"
I find this sequence of events interesting as a study in power. The powers that materialized when Trump became Tariff Man, allowed him to intervene in domains (like the domestic economy and foreign relations) that already had their own internal power relations, and also perhaps in other areas (certain international markets?) where there was no one in charge at all.
It's a fitting job for economists and political scientists to develop a precise understanding of all this. It would also be interesting to compare it to trade policy as wielded by other nations, perhaps especially China. Surely China doesn't hesitate to regulate trade for political and geopolitical reasons, though these actions would be announced by government ministries rather than a single autocrat.
> What was the point of these tariffs? It has never really been clear.
The Biden administration let in 5 trillion migrants who brought all the world's fentanyl and ate all the dogs and cats in the country and put Bolsonaro in prison and refused to accede Greenland and Canada to the US.
I think you have it right. The tariffs SCOTUS struck down granted the President enormous power to be wielded internationally and domestically. And personally.
Trump's response and Vance's words have to be seen in that light.
Trump's enactment of a new tariff that evades this ruling is a public assertion of power, not a considered economic policy. Not even a very meaningful power move, in a literal sense.
However, consider that he was told that he could have his tariffs, all he had to do was ASK Congress. Setting aside the political problem (lots of Republicans do not want to run on their tariff vote in November), a big part of his point is that he doesn't ask. He has unbridled power, both for personal satisfaction but also for wheeling and dealing.
Vance's statement that "This is lawlessness from the Court" however ought not be written off as merely ridiculous. It sheds light on Vance himself: The hell with Originalism or Living Constitutionalism or Political Process Theory, the law is whatever best serves the purposes of the president, the central authority. The president is the law; thus a ruling limiting his power is lawless.
Sure, it was Vance's job as VP to denounce the decision, but I think a lot of educated folk have their head in the sand when it comes to this guy, seeing him as less culturally alien than Trump. If we as a country fall for his more educated demeanor, I predict we will remember 2026 as the good old days.
I find it scary how we now just "gloss over" the President of the USA declaring the suprem court "under foreign influence" and the VP declaring their decision "illegal".
Is there any modern precedent for this kind of executive power attack on the other powers?
Probably if we look the 1930s US we can find something in discourse, given reactions against New Deal etc. but it's certainly nothing like anything since WWII... (except amongst Bircher Fringies)
I agree that accumulating power is the primary purpose of the tariffs, but Trump does use that power for personal enrichment, so I view your third possibility, personal enrichment, as a corollary of his quest for more power.
And that's why Trump won't back down on tariffs -- once he does, it means his power has peaked, and that other people don't have to kowtow to him, pay him tribute (like that stupid plane), or generally follow him as if he were the second coming of God.
The predictive ability of "how would a toddler behave" holds up pretty well. "Someone told Trump no? He's going to rage and bluster and try again. 10% no 15%!" Even a teenager could find a way to sulkily pretend he didn't lose: "SCOTUS said that Congress didn't use the right magic language to give me the powers our country needs me to have and that Congress clearly intended, but we can do things the hard way, sure."
But the "personal power" thing is certainly predictive, too! He could probably get the GOP Congress to simply grant him these powers. Little Mike Johnson is perfectly happy to kowtow even to the extent of redefining the meaning of the word "day" if it makes Daddy Donald temporarily happy. But a) Trump can't acknowledge that he's being given powers (notice when he talks, that he always simply HAS powers, he's never GIVEN them by other branches) and b) that "probably" is a potential humiliation at the hands of the likes of Reps Massie or Bacon, which he can't bear.
The only part I would argue is that he’s wielding the power more like a Sledge-O-Matic than a scalpel. Yes, he’s aiming at particular targets, but there’s no precision! He’s splattering crap in every direction. How many more days of this do we have to endure?
I agree with you, but Orin Cass in that podcast debate with you was claiming the benefits to US manufacturing wouldn’t show up for years, and we would expect short term pain right? I mean, I don’t want to destroy the economy for years just to say “told you so” to Orin Cass but I do think you misrepresent his claim here.
Although if you need to maintain tariffs for years, past the end of the administration, in order to see their benefits, you need to develop a consensus around them. RIght now, I expect tariffs to move around randomly during Trump's term as he uses them to bully countries, and then disappear once he's gone. That's hardly going to motivate changes in investment plans that may take a decade to pay off.
"What was the point of these tariffs? It has never really been clear. Trump’s official justification was that they were about reducing America’s chronic trade deficit."
They could never have been about that (although it is possible that Trump imagined it was possible). Trade deficits are a macroeconomic phenomenon governed by the surplus of investment over saving. Only to the extent that tariff revenue slightly reduce the fiscal deficit, do tariffs affect the trade deficit.
Trump Admin is channeling Trump's obsessions - shouldn't even say we or USA...
Point of Tariffs of course is Trump genuinely himself believes, all the way back to the 1980s and the reaction against Japan at the time that a protectionist program would cause the USA to become the idealised 1950s-early 1960s image of America that he and a certain MAGA faction loves.
Really simple as that.
What, if anything, should world leaders do about global imbalances?
"although the tariffs had their origin in 1990s-era worries about trade deficits, they ended up as a way to make the Presidency more like a dictatorship. That is almost certainly why the Supreme Court struck the IEEPA tariffs down"
I find this sequence of events interesting as a study in power. The powers that materialized when Trump became Tariff Man, allowed him to intervene in domains (like the domestic economy and foreign relations) that already had their own internal power relations, and also perhaps in other areas (certain international markets?) where there was no one in charge at all.
It's a fitting job for economists and political scientists to develop a precise understanding of all this. It would also be interesting to compare it to trade policy as wielded by other nations, perhaps especially China. Surely China doesn't hesitate to regulate trade for political and geopolitical reasons, though these actions would be announced by government ministries rather than a single autocrat.