Trump's Tariffs Are Ruled As Unconstitutional

[Res Ipsa]

My takeaways:

1. Roberts did a good thing by making his opinion clean and simple to understand: Trump can’t charge tariffs under a statute that gives him power to do many things but not tariffs.
2. Roberts has set the Court up to reject Trumps attempt to cancel or limit birthright citizenship. He referred a couple of times to the fact that no President has claimed the power Trump claimed under the statute in the 50 year history of the law. Now do the 14th amendment and 200 years.
3. The conservative Justices can’t agree on how their Major Questions Doctrine works. They split 3-3 on how the doctrine applies in this case. What they seem to agree on is that the doctrine has replaced what we used to think of as ordinary statutory interpretation.
4. The liberal justices have not bought into the major questions doctrine. They decided the case based on ordinary principles of statutory communications.
5. Neil Gorsuch’s concurrence Is the most entertaining opinion. (A pox on all your houses…)
6. Roberts seems done with Trump’s excessive power grabs, and he has more than the one vote he needs to join with the liberals to do that.
7. Thomas and Alito are completely result oriented. But we already knew that.
8. The decision will help reduce corruption. Trump was able to use his now-cancelled fiat tariffs as leverage to get goodies for himself and his friends and family. He can still raise tariffs as long as we have a trade imbalance, but only at a flat rate capped at 15%. The increase has to be uniform across countries, however, so he can’t put the screws on to a single country.
9. We the people paid the vast majority of those sweet tariff dollars, which Trump now must refund. But the refunds will be made to buyers of imported goods. Will the savings be shared with us? Maybe. A little…
10. The tariffs weren’t really held unconstitutional. The issue was never whether Trump had constitutional power to raise tariffs. It was whether a specific statute (IEEPA — go ahead and shout it. It’s fun) empowered him to tariff. That’s really statutory interpretation.
11. The Justices avoided reaching the issue of how much discretion Trump has when declaring an Emergency.

[Chap]

Thanks for the clear and succinct review!

[Philo Sofee]

In a 6-3 ruling handed down today, the Supreme Court declared Trump’s tariffs an unconstitutional presidential overreach. Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, reminded the administration that the Constitution leaves the power to tax and the power to levy tariffs, firmly in the hands of Congress, not the White House.

The Supreme Court (thanks to Trump) has now effectively opened a massive hole in the federal budget and a windfall for the private sector. The government is now facing a nightmare in figuring out how to refund an estimated nearly $200 billion for companies like Costco and thousands of smaller companies who have spent the last year paying for the President’s tariffs.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/suprem ... rcna244827

It's about F*****G TIME!!!!!!

[Doctor Steuss]

[...]
We the people paid the vast majority of those sweet tariff dollars, which Trump now must refund. But the refunds will be made to buyers of imported goods. Will the savings be shared with us? Maybe. A little…
[...]

There's an importer that I follow on TikTok. I can never remember his name -- his stuff just finds its way into my FYP on occasion.

He made a video following the ruling. I don't know if the majority of businesses are anticipating going this route, but the gist of his video was "if there's a refund, I'm going to pocket it, and my customers are already used to the higher prices because of Trump's tax on Americans, so I'll likely keep prices elevated and just enjoy the double-windfall."

Needless to say, there was no small amount of hate in the comments, but I've got to credit the dude for at least giving a raw peak behind the capitalist curtain.

[Res Ipsa]

We the people paid the vast majority of those sweet tariff dollars, which Trump now must refund. But the refunds will be made to buyers of imported goods. Will the savings be shared with us? Maybe. A little…

There's an importer that I follow on TikTok. I can never remember his name -- his stuff just finds its way into my FYP on occasion.

He made a video following the ruling. I don't know if the majority of businesses are anticipating going this route, but the gist of his video was "if there's a refund, I'm going to pocket it, and my customers are already used to the higher prices because of Trump's tax on Americans, so I'll likely keep prices elevated and just enjoy the double-windfall."

Needless to say, there was no small amount of hate in the comments, but I've got to credit the dude for at least giving a raw peak behind the capitalist curtain.

It all depends on the price elasticity of demand. Or, in other words, how much would the quantity demanded of the good increase in response to a price reduction. If the quantity demanded is not responsive to price changes, that strategy should be profitable. If it is responsive, others will undercut your guy and steal his customers.