- by New Deal democrat
Before I get to today’s data, let me make this brief note on the tariffs that were announced late yesterday and the instant reaction overnight. As to the effect on the US and global economy, I really don’t have anything useful to add to the general consensus of economists and other financial types; namely, this will function as a tax increase on consumers, who must pay more for the imported goods and services. I doubt very much there will be an expansion of domestic employment in “re-shored” industries to make up for that loss.
Aside from the fact that the entire process was slapdash, including tariffs on uninhabited islands and a joint US/UK military base, and that the formula boils down to a grade-schooler’s understanding of trade as zero-sum, more importantly the idea is being sold as a “re-ordering” of “global fair trade,” which like so many other moves made by this Administration, is illegal. Congress sets the terms of trade, including tariffs. Congress gave Presidents an “emergency” exception. T—-p invented a “fentanyl” emergency on the border, which he has now used for an entire global undoing of decades of policy - patently beyond his authority as President.
Which returns us to a fundamental Constitutional defect. The only remedies for such an overreach are either a Supreme Court decision which the Court decides it has to power to make, and which the President obeys; or Impeachment and Removal by the Congress, which requires a 2/3’s majority vote of the Senate - in other words, a dead letter.
As my old German grandmother used to say, “Those who cannot see must feel.” Americans in particular are about to have a very heavy round of “feeling.”
