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Trump's global tariffs struck down by US Supreme Court

bbc.com

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Re: Trump's global tariffs struck down by US Supreme Court

#161

Post by dawnerd »

lokar wrote: post #97
xnx wrote: post #57

Am I understanding this right? 1) US customer pays huge import tax on imported goods in the form of higher prices. 2) Seller sends the collected tax to the US government 3) US government will refund all/most of that tax back to the seller after this ruling 4) Seller gets to keep the returned tax money as pure profit (no refund to customer)

Most of the total tax collected seems to have been absorbed by the importers, lowering margins.

The price of googs this last year bed to differ. Maybe for some bigger companies on certain products but what stores like Walmart did was spread the price increase across all products so it wasn’t as obvious. And that’s now where it’s going to suck the most, prices are not going to come down. Ends up being a free handout to them.

Re: Trump's global tariffs struck down by US Supreme Court

#162

Post by entuno »

apexalpha wrote: post #136

It's odd to me that something as fundamental as 'can the President unilaterally impose tariffs on any country he wants anytime he wants' is apparently so ill defined in law that 9 justices can't agree on it.

And that it took this long to get an answer to that question.

Re: Trump's global tariffs struck down by US Supreme Court

#163

Post by karel-3d »

apexalpha wrote: post #136

It's odd to me that something as fundamental as 'can the President unilaterally impose tariffs on any country he wants anytime he wants' is apparently so ill defined in law that 9 justices can't agree on it.

The thing is he usually cannot but sometimes can. The issue is around "sometimes".

Re: Trump's global tariffs struck down by US Supreme Court

#164

Post by estimator7292 »

elAhmo wrote: post #109

I am still baffled by the notion that Trump and co. managed to spread the 'other countries are paying for the tariffs' narrative into mainstream and having so many world leaders bend over just to have them not imposed. Knowing they are short-lived, unpredictable, illegal, and in the end hurting the US consumers primarily. Sure, if there is a huge tariff on something, the user might look for an alternative, causing lo…

The reality is that even though foreign sellers aren't paying the tarriffs directly, they do experience a direct decrease in demand because one of the largest markets on the planet has made your goods artificially more expensive.

Even if you're still making the same money per unit, tarriffs mean you sell fewer units. So many less that it's an existential threat to many businesses.

Re: Trump's global tariffs struck down by US Supreme Court

#165

Post by FrustratedMonky »

edot wrote: post #40

Howard Lutnick and his sons are surely happy about this. It’s almost like Howard Lutnick, the Secretary of Commerce , knew this would happen. His sons, at their firm Cantor Fitzgerald, have been offering a tariff refund product wherein they pay companies who are struggling with paying tariffs 20-30% of a potential refund, and if (as they did today) they get struck down, they pocket the 100% refund. https://www.financ…

Remember when a conflict of interest was so important that Jimmy Carter sold his peanut farm, because heaven forbid, he accidentally made some money while president.

Like his peanut farm would unduly sway government peanut policy.

Re: Trump's global tariffs struck down by US Supreme Court

#166

Post by jonkoops »

saubeidl wrote: post #127
jonkoops wrote: post #100

I wonder what this means for the EU. We made a new deal under pressure of the tariffs that is actually worse than the deal we had. If we had not bent the knee, we would have had that original deal back, or at least, so it seems? Now we seem to be properly shafted due to weak politicians.

We never actually ratified that deal. Parliament froze it when Trump started threatening Greenland.

Great! Then the next step would be to simply pull out.

Re: Trump's global tariffs struck down by US Supreme Court

#167

Post by arunabha »

chrisweekly wrote: post #130
ajross wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's just bluster. The IEEPA nonsense was already the creative trickery deployed in defense of a novel and prima facia unconstitutional policy. If they had a better argument, they would have made it. And we know in practice that Trump TACOs out rather than pick real fights with established powers. Markets don't like it when regulatory agencies go rogue vs. the rule of law. They'll just shift gears to something else…

TACOs?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_Always_Chickens_Out

Trump Always Chickens Out (TACO) is a term that gained prominence in May 2025 after many threats and reversals during the trade war U.S. president Donald Trump initiated with his administration's "Liberation Day" tariffs.

The charitable explanation is that he chickens out when confronted with real backlash.The less charitable explanation is that he 'chickens' out after the appropriate bribe has been paid to him.

Re: Trump's global tariffs struck down by US Supreme Court

#168

Post by mastax »

fullshark wrote: post #12
franktankbank wrote: post #2

Can't say one way or another whether the power of the president was abused in this case but its a sad state for businesses who can't get started because of flip flopping policy. I'm for the tarrifs, its absolutely ridiculous to think only Wall Street matters.

Just because businesses / wall street doesn't like something doesn't mean it's necessarily good for every day Americans. The tariff vision of on-shoring manufacturing and reliving the glory days of the post WW2 era was rooted in fantasy. The US simply cannot compete given its labor costs and actual manufacturing know-how. Perhaps this is an overdue wakeup call, and a freak out is in order regarding this reality but u…

If the US really wanted to make a durable shift to manufacturing, presidential tariffs by fiat aren’t a good strategy anyway. Tariffs could be a small part of that strategy but they should be targeted, not broad, and enacted by congress so businesses have the kind of decades-long stability required to invest in factories that take years to pay off.

Re: Trump's global tariffs struck down by US Supreme Court

#169

Post by pavlov »

bdangubic wrote: post #147
pavlov wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many countries that have functioning constitutions that are regularly revised. It’s not impossible for the USA to get there one day.

it is impossible and it is great that it is impossible because you need one party to basically run everything at the federal level and vast majority at the state level which means that any changes to the constitution would be heavily politically motivated to one side of the isle.

Looking at the results, it's obviously not great that there's no reasonable process to update the constitution. It's the most dysfunctional democracy in the West.

Change that seems inevitable in retrospect often feels like a surprise in the moment. France its on its fifth republic. A second American republic is not impossible.

Re: Trump's global tariffs struck down by US Supreme Court

#170

Post by blackcatsec »

tfehring wrote: post #56
sschueller wrote: post #4

The global damage has been done. It took too long and it looks like it will only be partially reversed. Constitutional changes are required for other countries to trust in the stability of the US in the future.

I don’t see how constitutional changes would help. The constitution already creates separation of powers, limits on executive authority, and procedures for removing an unfit president or one who commits serious crimes. But these only matter to the extent that majorities of elected and appointed officials care, and today’s ruling notwithstanding, there’s no political will to enforce any of them. The plurality of Ameri…

I think you're misunderstanding at least a little bit here. The Constitution created separation of powers, but what it did not do is explicitly block a particular branch from either abdicating their duty or simply delegating their power back to the executive.

It's certainly an interesting situation that wasn't explicitly spelled out in the law. But as far as everything that's working, it's realistically all within the legal framework of the Constitution. There are procedures to remove an unfit President, sure; but there's no requirement baked into the Constitution that requires those parties to act upon those procedures.

In short, it's a whole lot of short-sightedness of the Constitution combined with willing participants across multiple branches of the government.

The problems unearthed and the damage being done will take decades to fix just our internal issues, and it's very likely we will never resolve our international problems.

I don't know what the future holds for the United States, but we are certainly going to be operating from a severe handicap for quite a while.

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